As a child, fear of ghosts kept me oft awake, yet as in a daze:
It was my mistake, my horrible haze.
(Oh! The errors
Of our terrors...)
As I grew, I tasted the fruit, the courage,
Of a kind snake.
I became the salutary outrage
of eternal light.
I unravelled the finer mysteries
That shrink from sight
And made peace with the night
That had threatened
To keep us ever wettened
And white.
But as we had exited the darkened cave
To claim our birthright, no longer a slave,
A new monster finally gave
Us a reason for our until-then false fright.
And though we fought with all our might
The fiend broke the beautiful, dancing kite
That we had sent out as our emissary into the Light,
And it fell from a lofty peak
Back into the terrible Night!
Now it is fallen apart at the "seems" -
They think they know which way my heart leans
But see only their own troubled dreams
I would wean them from their fusty schemes if I only had the
means...
Is there nothing uncanny in this old charade ?
Or will I even keep them up "on-ward"?
If they only knew
The terrors
Of their errors...
They would never sleep soundly again.
Now I am a phantom,
A vaporous myst, obscuring the earth, that wants only to chase
others from their stuporous repose
But, for a moment, I was a kid of considerable ken!