Now wails the Banshee

source

I am in the blues, boy, unfathomable. All is wrong: that I am old and full of wear, that Life, the sorceress, is wearying of me; soon she will play the jilt. And here I sit, cudgelling my jaded brains for to evade the one event. But even the Count is mortal, and his palace of youth evanished in a golden mist of memories. Now the worms’ banqueting hour is at hand, now wails the Banshee.

Walter de la Mare - The Moon's Miracle (1897)

What a gift eh? To draw the reader's mood out of a comfortable chair into the subtle shadows of mortality and uneasy ennui. Passages such as this lead me to stop reading, to stare into the fire and listen to the tick of the clock for a while.