| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1551. Death |
| | | By Madison Cawein |
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| THROUGH some strange sense of sight or touch | |
| I find what all have found before, | |
| The presence I have feared so much, | |
| The unknown’s immaterial door. | |
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| I seek not and it comes to me; | 5 |
| The do not know the thing I find: | |
| The fillet of fatality | |
| Drops from my brows that made me blind. | |
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| Point forward now or backward, light! | |
| The way I take I may not choose: | 10 |
| Out of the night into the night, | |
| And in the night no certain clews. | |
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| But on the future, dim and vast, | |
| And dark with dust and sacrifice, | |
| Death’s towering ruin from the past | 15 |
| Makes black the land that round me lies. | |
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