The Black Caravan

The desert. Sand and salt. The fall of night.

And suddenly you see a long-drawn string

Of coffin-laden camels, hurrying

Across the waste of thirst in the dim light.

And swerving wide, you shudder from the sight,

As you'd shrink back from some ill-omened thing,

While pass the captives of the Shadowy King,

Who thirst no more, no more look left or right.

So, sometimes in the Desert of the Years

A ghostly train, a convoy of the Dead,

In a soul's twilight suddenly appears;

Dead aims and dead ideals, once athirst

For Life's bright wells; now stark and dumb and dread,

And wrapped in horror, like a thing accurst.