Here were the lights that fixed the dark
That flowed among the spires,
And there were the children who bore the marks
Of hopes that failed, and dreams so stark
As smothered all their fires.

He shook his grey-swathed head and wept,
He gathered a life in his arms,
And parents cursed and spat, bereft,
But followed the track the horse had left
To reach the House of Dawn.

So blindly grope in that sullen light;
How it smears the soot-spun sky!
Or follow his path to escape the blight,
For never a man had as clear a sight
As the Knight of the Crooked Eye.