As evening falls, the speaker sees it as a curtain dropping on the day’s play. The seats of life are empty, the twilight fire is out, and darkness arrives like stage curtains woven by a grieving star. That star mourns the hours time has buried. Then the poem turns inward. The speaker’s “night of the soul” is even more desolate: no light, no mourner, no fate to weep for him. This hollow is so deep that fear stays away and silence itself flees. The title calls this remorse, but it feels less like guilt than like being utterly forsaken—hollow within hollow. The final cry, “O, the pity of it!”, is sorrow at his own emptiness. The mood is quiet, heavy, and strangely vast, as if the speaker has become a darkness too empty even for fear or silence.
Remorse — Summary
Gently descending dark-- Curtain of silence From heaven to earth;
The drama of day over, Empty the seats of life, Dead the twilight fire.
Curtains of black Woven from threads of purple By the hands of a star,
That lone soul weeping Over the dead hours Laid by mute time in the eternal's grave.
In the night of my soul Not even a ray, Nor a mourner present;
But a deep dark hollow Where no fate weeps Even fear is afraid to tread:
Fear-forsaken, hollow within hollow, Even silence flees from me-- O, the pity of it!