Limbo by Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Read

Tis a strange place, this Limbo! -- not a Place, / Yet name it so; -- where Time and weary Space / Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing, / Strive for their last crepuscular half-being; -- / Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands / Barren and soundless as the measuring sands, / Not mark'd by flit of Shades, -- unmeaning they / As moonlight on the dial of the day! / But that is lovely -- looks like human Time, -- / An old man with a steady look sublime, / That stops his earthly task to watch the skies; / But he is blind -- a statue hath such eyes; -- / Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance, / Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance, / With scant white hairs, with fore top bald and high, / He gazes still, -- his eyeless face all eye; -- / As 'twere an organ full of silent sight, / His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light! / Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb -- / He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him! / No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure, / Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure, / By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all, / Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral. / A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation, / Yet that is but a Purgatory curse; / Hell knows a fear far worse, / A fear -- a future state; -- 'tis positive Negation!