Classic Poem

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.