Phantom Pt.1

Amidst the white and endless sky,
The clouds revolve and tremble;
Turgid tempest blossoms nigh,
Where rage and wrath assemble.

Through lust and mediocrity,
Mankind fell ill to feeling;
There sullen sought monstrosity
Left man and kindred reeling.

Then storm on darkened gables drew,
And turbid gales did linger,
In districts blood and bleating knew,
Where swords rest cold in fingers.

So silence veiled the lost remains,
And nature ceased to stir;
The slain deluged the streets and lanes,
Where frigid drafts abjure.

And somewhere in a city square,
A squire wrote in blood
Upon a pristine wall left there,
Whose sermon looms above:

"In every square of land and plain,
The story read the same;
Tempest high and lowly maimed,
Till only grace remained."

And on the arid, level wasteland,
Stranger by his trade,
Did wander still and sterile sand,
As time itself decayed.

A sanguine cloak his shoulders bore,
That flickered in the gales;
A sword and shield his stock and store,
And mead and rancid kale.

A sanguine hood engulfed his head;
A metal mask he wore,
That neither love nor hatred bred;
No character it bore.

Across the aural desert laid,
A shadow drew adrift;
A rising fog in colonnades
Amassed in storm clouds swift.

Graceful heavens, burdened be,
Grew dark with clouds and thunder.
Cyclones loomed on land and sea:
The dark is torn asunder.

The silence is eviscerated;
Lightning strikes the ground –
An ashen spot incinerated
Smokes without a sound.

Phantom rises ashes from,
A shadow cloaken darkly;
Bound to rise when kingdom come,
Obeying burden starkly.

Darkness clothed the Phantom wholly,
Floating round his form;
Pluming shadow bathed him fully,
Wav'ring null of norm.

Shining eyes of white there sunken
Glared at stranger wayward;
Hollow, absent, morbid-drunken
Eyes returned the favor.

Phantom, morbid, loft and lordly
Hovered there before;
Stranger fast stood wise and worldly,
Wand'ring forth no more.

"Phantom, art you?" spoke the Stranger,
Paying pleasance slowly.
"Art you not a spectral ranger,
Hunting vengeance lowly?"

"Stranger," morbid Phantom roared,
His booming voice resounding,
"All these golden sands I lord,
As they are of my founding.
"Bid me neither high nor low
Your judgment right or wrongly;
Conjure all the grace you know,
And bide in patience strongly.
"A moment now of tragedy
May ward you from my preaching;
Take me not as deity,
But shepherd for your teaching.
"I am all of lost society,
A shadow of the dead,
Whose souls transcend reality,
Where man to fate is fed.
"Hatred, rage, and malice straining,
Suffering befalls;
All our hopes and dreams remaining
Spoiled on the walls.
And all my wanted words retaining
Strike me ill with gall.

"Fogs drew out injustice on
A many heath and hill;
Our brazen blades were thrust upon
By black and godless will.
In forests dark with morning dew,
On pristine marble stairs,
In hovels where our children grew –
You'll find our bodies there.
"Cold and pale and silently,
Our forms are left to rot,
And all those manners violently
Our minds, as well, begot.
"Now darkly do our souls persist
And see upon our gloom:
In phantom ranks we now enlist
To dwell within our doom.
And no human life shall hence subsist
To occupy this room.

"But you there, strange and wayward one,
See neither fear nor virtue,
Whilst tread you 'neath a friendless sun,
Whilst all the earth desert you.
Now all our homes sit silently
In brisk and tranquil fogs;
Our forms portray impiety,
Disgraced by feral dogs.
What claim you to our empty homes?
What providence dispels you?
Will quaff you all the graceful loam,
And live by what compels you?"

"Presume of me no more, my friend,"
The Stranger said to Ghost.
"My stroll, I hope, shall never end,
Of which I make the most!
I find your grim philosophy
Revealing of your style;
It's really very awfully
Distraught, abstract, and vile!
Why do you strain vitality
To level with your wrongs?
For even past finality,
Your vice shall make you strong;
The birds acclaim reality
With sweet and vivid songs."

And here the sky grew dark and rolled;
The Phantom's rage congests;
The placid breeze relapsed with cold –
A hellish voice protests:

"What stretch of imbecility
Allows you on this earth?
What bitch of ill fertility
Was cursed to fare your birth?
Whose teaching told such twisted myths?
What fables do you serve?
Your sightless words have granted you
A grand esteem of nerve!
To thence perceive my words abstract
Should show to you your faults;
How vast the span of spoilt tact
That's justified your vault!
And thus, by all our force remaining,
Numerous we are,
We shan't permit your footsteps gaining
Distance, near or far;
And there upon those heaths and hills,
Through hollowed homes of old,
In sunshine and in shadow still,
You'll wander, free and bold!
And all our strange and wanting rage
Has suffered no recourse,
'For all the tragic world's a stage,
And all our lines remorse.'
Our sorrow flows throughout this cage,
Whose river knows no source."