Sonnet Xiii Poem by Barry Van Asten

O adorable youth! - has your love fled;
Has that which filled the heart, now gone?
And is my world fallen where shadows lie long
Through remembered seasons of the dead;
Steered into silence by a serpent sun?
O heart, empty of ceremony and song,
Where the light divine once brightly shone.
And these are the last words of an old world, ended,
Lost to the unutterable shades of fate;
Fearful of what is to become
Without the glory of your radiant name
In this masquerade of tears and hate;
Crowned a fool by wisdom, dumb,
And born of sorrow, to die the same.