Darkness

    I HAD a dream of a wild-lit place
    Where three dark spirits met face to face.

    One said: "I am darkest; I had birth
    In the central blackness of mid-earth."

    With a sneer one said, below his breath:
    "I am still more dark, for I am Death."

    But the third, with voice that bleaker pealed
    Than freezing wind on a houseless field,

    Cried, where he stood from the rest apart,
    "I am that darkness which fills man's heart

    "When it aches and yearns and burns for one
    It has loved as the meadow loves the sun!"

    Now I gazed on him from earth's mid-reach,
    And now on the spirit of death; and each,

    Though dark with a darkness to affright,
    Beside that third was a shape of light.


    Edgar Fawcett