How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life, <br />A spatter of rust on its polished steel! <br />The seasons reel <br />Like a goaded wheel. <br />Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife. <br /> <br />The night is sliding towards the dawn, <br />And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees. <br />A torn moon flees <br />Through the hemlock trees, <br />The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn. <br /> <br />Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing <br />A rabble of clouds flares out of the east. <br />Like dogs unleashed <br />After a beast, <br />They stream on the sky, an outflung string. <br /> <br />A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark, <br />Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests, <br />And the fierce unrests <br />I keep as guests <br />Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark. <br /> <br />Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt <br />My labouring mind, I have fought and failed. <br />I have not quailed, <br />I was all unmailed <br />And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt. <br /> <br />The moon drops into the silver day <br />As waking out of her swoon she comes. <br />I hear the drums <br />Of millenniums <br />Beating the mornings I still must stay. <br /> <br />The years I must watch go in and out, <br />While I build with water, and dig in air, <br />And the trumpets blare <br />Hollow despair, <br />The shuddering trumpets of utter rout. <br /> <br />An atom tossed in a chaos made <br />Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam. <br />Whence have I come? <br />What would be home? <br />I hear no answer. I am afraid! <br /> <br />I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame. <br />Pushed into nothingness by a breath, <br />And quench in a wreath <br />Of engulfing death <br />This fight for a God, or this devil's game.<br /><br />Amy Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-last-quarter-of-the-moon/
