They Fail, And They Alone, Who Have

Those Forms We Fancy Shadows, Those Strange Lights That Flash On Dank Morasses, The Quick Wind That Smites Us By The Roadside—are The Night's Innumerable Children. Unconfined By Shroud Or Coffin, Disembodied Souls, Uneasy Spirits, Steal Into The Air From Festering Graveyards When The Curfew Tolls At The Day's Death... And Wheresoever Murders Have Been Done, In Stately Palaces Or Lonesome Woods, Where'er A Soul Has Sold Itself And Lost Its High Inheritance, There, Hovering, Broods Some Sad, Invisible, Accurséd Ghost!

Imagine All Human Beings Swept Off The Face Of The Earth, Excepting One Man. Imagine This Man In Some Vast City, New York Or London. Imagine Him On The Third Or Fourth Day Of His Solitude Sitting In A House And Hearing A Ring At The Door-bell!

Wide Open And Unguarded Stand Our Gates, And Through Them Presses A Wild Motley Throng, Men From The Volga And The Tartar Steppes, Featureless Figures Of The Hoang-ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, And Slav. Flying The Old World's Poverty And Scorn, These Bringing With Them Unknown Gods And Rites, Ttose, Tiger Passions, Here To Stretch Their Claws In Street And Alley. What Strange Tongues Are Loud Accents Of Menace Alien To Our Air, Voices That Once The Tower Of Babel Knew! O Liberty, White Goddess! Is It Well To Leave The Gates Unguarded?

Come Watch With Me The Shaft Of Fire That Glows In Yonder West; The Fair, Frail Palaces, The Fading Alps And Archipelagoes And Great Cloud Continents Of Sunset-seas.

We Weep When We Are Born, Not When We Die!