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Through Foulest Fogs

Through foulest fogs of my own sluggish soul,

Through midnight glooms of all the wide world's guilt,

Through sulphurous cannon-clouds that surge and roll

Above the steam of blood in anger spilt;

Through all the sombre earth-oppressing piles

Of old cathedral temples which expand

Sepulchral vaults and monumental aisles,

Hopeless and freezing in the lifeful land;

I gaze and seek with ever-longing eyes

For God, the Love-Supreme, all-wise, all-good:

Alas! in vain; for over all the skies

A dark and awful shadow seems to brood,

A numbing, infinite, eternal gloom:

I tremble in the consciousness of Doom.