Classic Poem

Beyond the end of the world,
There is a grey plain — treeless, houseless, barren —
Where the souls of those departed
Wait for the Judgment Day.

The sun never shines there:
All the day long the drizzling rain falls
From the clouds chasing each other.
Only sometimes at sunset
Great red stormy gleams swirl upward,
Shadows before God's face.

And all day long the tired souls wander
Over the stony ridges, down the grassless valleys;
But in the night, by the banks of dim rivers,
They crouch motionless, huddling their heads in their graveclothes,
Soothing their souls with silent regret for life,
While the smoke-black storm-clouds, swinging their wide banners headlong,
Let fall through them greenish gleams of watery moonlight.

There every river is bank-full of tears:
Brackish, greyish water.
There all day and all night the wind carries up through the air
Voices, crying emptily to each other.

The souls are weary of that place;
They pray for life again with faint regret.
But until man's will is broken,
Until his desires fall like broken toys at his feet,
Until God's judgment on time is accomplished,
Until the stars are made new,
They must abide and wait.

Only sometimes through the dim night-season,
And most of all in the hour before dawn,
They see falling downwards through the air,
The newly dead who come to them.
Like whirling blue whisps of smoke
In the ash-grey dawn light,
The dead fall apart from the flying cloud-mass
And are cast to the centre at hazard.

This is the last place where we may meet;
And should you come to me
Out of the cloud, and I see you falling
In the shape of one wrapt for burial,
With shut eyes and motionless lips,
Far from my weary feet;
Perhaps for a little while I might desire to seek you,
But after I shall turn, and hide my face.