Explore "After" by Gilbert Parker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Bands broken, cords loosened, and all / Set free. Well, I know / That I turned my cold face to the wall, / Was silent, strove, gasped, then there fell / A numbness, a faintness, a spell / Of blindness, hung as a pall, / On me, falling low, / And a far fading sound of a knell.
Then a fierce stretching of hands / In gloom; and my feet, / Treading tremulous over hard sands; / A wind that wailed wearily slow, / A plashing of waters below, / A twilight on bleak lone lands, / Spread out; and a sheet / Of the moaning sea shallows aflow.
Then a steep highway that leads / Somewhere, cold, austere; / And I follow a shadow that heeds / My coming, and points, not in wrath, / Out over: we tread the sere path / Up to the summit; recedes / All gloom; and at last / The beauty a flower-land hath.