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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


SONNET; COMPOSED AFTER MIDNIGHT ON 31ST OF DECEMBER, 1878 by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

Poet Analysis

First Line: A MOMENT SINCE HIS BREATH DISSOLVED IN AIR!
Last Line: CLOTHES THE DIM GHOST OF HIM JUST PASSED AWAY!
Subject(s): DEATH; DEAD, THE;

A MOMENT since his breath dissolved in air!
And now divorced from life's last hectic glow,
He joins the old ghostly years of long ago,
In some cloud-folded realm of vague despair;
Ah me! the unsceptred years that wander there!
With cold, wan hands, and faces white as snow,
And echoes of dead voices quavering low
The phantom-burden of long-perished care!
Perchance all unsubstantialized and gray,
Time's earliest year now greets his last, deceased;
Or he that dumbly gazed on Adam's fall,
Palely emerging from the shadowy east,
With flickering semblance of cold crown and pall,
Clothes the dim ghost of him just passed away!



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