Children of the Night

Supremacy

     There is a drear and lonely tract of hell
     From all the common gloom removed afar:
     A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,
     Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.
     I walked among them and I knew them well:
     Men I had slandered on life's little star
     For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar
     Upon their brows of woe ineffable.

     But as I went majestic on my way,
     Into the dark they vanished, one by one,
     Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day,
     The dream of all my glory was undone, —
     And, with a fool's importunate dismay,
     I heard the dead men singing in the sun.