Through Foulest Fogs

BY JAMES THOMSON

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.

(Date unknown. Probably written during the 1860's.)