I saw no thronged angelic court, I saw no great white throne,

I saw no open judgment books, I seemed to stand alone.

I seemed to stand alone beside a solemn sounding sea,

While, at my feet upon the shore, broke waves of memory.

Their murmuring music sobbed and sought a way into my soul,

The perfect past was present there, and I could see it whole,

Its beauty and its ugliness, its sorrow and its sin,

Its splendour and its sordidness, as wave on wave rolled in.

And ever deeper pierced the pain of all that I had lost,

My dear dead dreams of perfect things, I saw them tempest-tossed.

They fell like wreckage at my feet, and, as I turned them o’er,

The solemn waves, in Memory’s caves, kept booming “Nevermore!”

There came one dream, more dear than all, a corpse without a head,

The flying spray hissed cowardice, and it was dead, cold dead.

Then suddenly a shadow fell, and I was not alone,

He stood with me beside the sea, and listened to its moan.

I did not dare to raise my eyes, I feared what I might see,

A cold sweat broke and bathed my brow, I longed to turn and flee,

But could not; rooted there I stood, in shiv’ring shame and fear,

The subtle shadow substance took, and nearer came, and near.

O was it days or was it years, we stood beside that sea,

Or was it aeons, timeless times? It seemed eternity.

At last, compelled, I raised my eyes. Two eyes looked into mine,

And shattered all my soul with shame, so sad and so divine.

It palsied all my pride with pain, the terror of those tears,

And wrought into my soul the woe of all my wasted years.

“Depart from me,” I cried, “depart, I cannot stand with Thee

And face the sorrow of those eyes, beside this cruel sea.

Depart from me, I dare not tread the sands those feet have trod,

Nor look into those eyes that tell the agony of God.

Depart,” I cried, and He was gone. I stood there all alone,

In silence save that Memory’s sea still made perpetual moan.

Night shadowed all, and wandering winds came wailing from afar,

But out across the darkening sea shone forth one single star.