Lo! darkness bends down like a mother of grief
On the limitless plain, and the fall of her hair
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Lo! darkness bends down like a mother of grief
On the limitless plain, and the fall of her hair
It has mantled a world.

Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
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Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

Dark as pitch.

Dark as pitch.

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into read more

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.

There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.

There is no such thing as darkness; only a failure to see.

In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace

In darkness one may be ashamed of what one does, without the shame of disgrace

And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men.

And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro' nature, moulding men.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how read more

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.