Classic Poem

Dimly gleams the moon over the ravaged veld,
Dimly, for her lovely face is shadowed
In filmy veils of dry and fraying cloud;
And mists—emanations of the wrath
Of torrid day, smoke from his furnaces—
Rise from the tortured earth. Bodiless clouds,
And bloodless mists wander disconsolately—
Illusionary phantoms, deceiving ghosts,
Unprofitable and futile as regret,
Which comes when opportunity is gone,
Even as the melancholy afterglow that blooms
In transitory beauty when the sun