AT BREAK OF DAY, a poem

I THOUGHT that past the gates of doom,
     Where Orpheus played a strain divine
     Of love importunate as mine,
Unto the dwellings of the dead I came through paths of gloom.

Around me, looming dark through cloud,
     Vast walls arose whence mournful fell
     The shadow and the hush of hell;
And silence, brooding, palpable, enwrapped me like a shroud.

Naught blossomed there; in that chill place
     Where longing dwells divorced from hope,
     Naught to a joyless horoscope
Lent prophecies of future grace, but—I beheld thy face!

And I awoke,—songs trembling near,—
     Awoke and saw day's chariot pass
     Bright gleaming o'er the meadow-grass,
And knew this glad earth without thee, than realms of Death more drear!

"At Break of Day" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Century Magazine (April 1892), Poems (1898) and Poems (1916) Volume I.