Sonnet Variation: Longfellow's "The Cross of Snow"
In the long, sleepless watches of the night
I wandered with the phantoms of the dead
through mazes wondrous, through my dreaming head,
illumined by the moon's all-maddening light.
The world was ink and paper, black and white,
and through the halls my sleeping steps were led
past rows and shelves of dusty books not read
in monasteries never benedight.
Yet as the moon was setting in the West,
the walls like cliffs in deep and dark ravines
rose up like mountains on each darkened side.
A fear was stirred within my pounding breast
and life itself passed by in flickered scenes;
with sigh I fell away and gently died.
