| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1341. The Dead Moon |
| | | By Danske Dandridge |
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| WE are ghost-ridden: | |
| Through the deep night | |
| Wanders a spirit, | |
| Noiseless and white; | |
| Loiters not, lingers not, knoweth not rest, | 5 |
| Ceaselessly haunting the East and the West. | |
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| She, whose undoing the ages have wrought, | |
| Moves on to the time of God’s rhythmical thought. | |
| In the dark, swinging sea, | |
| As she speedeth through space, | 10 |
| She reads her pale image; | |
| The wounds are agape on her face. | |
| She sees her grim nakedness | |
| Pierced by the eyes | |
| Of the Spirits of God | 15 |
| In their flight through the skies. | |
| (Her wounds,—they are many and hollow.) | |
| The Earth turns and wheels as she flies, | |
| And this Spectre, this Ancient, must follow | |
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| When, in the æons, | 20 |
| Had she beginning? | |
| What is her story? | |
| What was her sinning? | |
| Do the ranks of the Holy Ones | |
| Know of her crime? | 25 |
| Does it loom in the mists | |
| Of the birthplace of Time? | |
| The stars, do they speak of her | |
| Under their breath, | |
| “Will this Wraith be forever | 30 |
| Thus restless in death?” | |
| On, through immensity, | |
| Sliding and stealing, | |
| On, through infinity, | |
| Nothing revealing? | 35 |
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| I see the fond lovers: | |
| They walk in her light; | |
| They charge the “soft maiden” | |
| To bless their love-plight. | |
| Does she laugh in her place, | 40 |
| As she glideth through space? | |
| Does she laugh in her orbit with never a sound? | |
| That to her, a dead body, | |
| With nothing but rents in her round— | |
| Blighted and marred, | 45 |
| Wrinkled and scarred, | |
| Barren and cold, | |
| Wizened and old— | |
| That to her should be told, | |
| That to her should be sung | 50 |
| The yearning and burning of them that are young? | |
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| Our Earth that is young, | |
| That is throbbing with life, | |
| Has fiery upheavals, | |
| Has boisterous strife; | 55 |
| But she that is dead has no stir, breathes no air; | |
| She is calm, she is voiceless, in lonely despair. | |
| We dart through the void; | |
| We have cries, we have laughter; | |
| The phantom that haunts us | 60 |
| Comes silently after. | |
| This Ghost-lady follows, | |
| Though none hear her tread; | |
| On, on, we are flying, | |
| Still tracked by our Dead— | 65 |
| By this white, awful Mystery, | |
| Haggard and dead. | |
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