University of Virginia Library

As in those lands of mighty mountain heights,
The streams, by sudden tempests overcharged,
Sweep down the slopes, bearing swift ruin with them,
So I and all my fortunes were engulf'd
In sudden, swift, complete destruction;
The morning found me happy, rich, contented,
But ere the sunset that black ruin came,
And stared me in the face.

Sir, I had reach'd
A stage of middle life, when chains of habit
Cannot be broken, save by giant wrenches,
When to be rudely hurled from life-long grooves
Of thought and progress, leaves the staunchest mind
Broken, amazed, despondent. What had I,
A scholar, recluse, dreamer, thou may'st say,
In common with the work-day world of men?
Yet, goaded on by fierce necessity,
I sought work in the crowded haunts of cities,
Thinking to draw on knowledge as a bank,
Exhaustless, opulent, whereby all needs,
Not born of random, loose extravagance,
Would be assuredly answered. Ah! poor fool:
Too soon experience clove the shining mist
Of hopeful fantasy, and like a wind,
Sullen at first and slow, but raised ere long
To tempest-madness, rent the veil away
O'er which a steel-blue melancholy heaven
Glared on me, like a mocking eye in death:
Then came by turn mistrust, despondence, dread,
And last, despair, with frenzy; the brute instincts,
That sleep like tigers, jungled, in the blood,
With hale or pampered bodies, at the sting
Of loathsome famine, woke, and raged and tore,
Till Conscience, whose fair seat is in the soul,
Till Reason, whose deep life is in the brain,
Lay silent, murdered. A mere animal thing—
Hyena, tiger, wolf—whate'er thou wilt—
I seized my prey and rent it. What to me
The complex figments of your juggling laws?
Nature with countless clamorous tongues cried out,
“Thou hungerest, diest; snatch thy food from fate,
Though 'twixt thee and the life-sustaining bread
A hundred sleek, smooth, sneering tyrants stand
Laughing to scorn thine untold agonies!”
Almighty Nature, the first law of God,
Perforce I followed; the false codes of man
Perforce I broke. And so, for this, for this,
Man's law that fain would run a tilt at God,
Its puny weapon shivering like a reed,
'Gainst the great bosses of Jehovah's buckler,
Appoints me death. Well, well, I fear not death,
Trusting that death, perchance, is but a night
Shorn of all morrow, a long, dreamless slumber,
O'er which the ages, hoar and solemn nurses,
Chant their majestic lullabies, that hold
Spells of oblivion; either thus, or I,
Whose life-sun rose in shadow, sets in blood,
Shall find a nobler being in some star
Beyond the silvery Pleiads.

Friend, thy hand;
Alone of all earth's creatures do I love thee:
Thee, and the little soft-eyed, pensive child,
Thy fairy daughter. Strange! but when I drink
Light from the founts of her large, serious eyes,
I seem to near a trembling, spiritual joy,
To thrill upon the utmost verge and brink
Of mystic revelations. Prithee, therefore,
Bring the fair child once more; I yearn to carry
The dream of her sweet, pitiful, angel's face,
To cheer the realm of shadows. Will she come?