[BNP/E3, 77 – 68]

Sonnet of a Sceptic.

Long ere now Phoebus sunk in western skies

Behind his dreamy hills of tinted rose;

When I in pain my troubled eyelids close

And look upon the world that in me lies.

For in the night the silent river flows,

In darkness hid the bat unheeded flies:

In my soul's night, alas! no calmness lies,

With Nature's night too well my horror grows.

Darkness I hate, for I am like the night,

And yet in me no star, serenely bright,

The clouds of mind and soul so purely clears.

But as night with its pall of shades of old,

Unheard, unseen, I sit in heatless cold,

Enwrapped in my doubts and in my fears.

Alexander Search.

1904.