Page:Poems Allen.djvu/120

SKELETONS.

RIENDS, the foot-way is steep and rough,
 Harder and wearier day by day,
Dreary, we murmur, and hard enough
 E'en could we cast these loads away,—
 Terrible burdens, alas; are they.

Skeletons, ghastly and strange and grim,—
 How we shrink from each spectral form!
Shadows with sad eyes wet and dim,
 Fair young corpses, with lips yet warm,—
 These we carry through shine and storm.

Lying down with them, night by night,
 Rising up with them, morn by morn,
Bearing their weight through the long daylight,
 Facing them still when the stars are born,—
 O, how weary and how forlorn!

Ah, my neighbor, your face is fair,
 Gay and smiling, the whole day through;