University of Virginia Library

What walkings and runnings to and fro,
What asking of questions, what fury and fuming
To think these flying mountains of snow
Could ever with us be so presuming!
But here we were, in a prison all
Mid wonderful crystals, hewed with care
By Nature's chisel:—though ultra-small,
Geometry's wonders all were there.
But prisons are prisons, however decked
Their walls with beauty: and little recked
Our throng in thralldom as to the hoard
Of jewelled wonders around them stored.
So louder and louder the clamor rose,
And lawlessness covert and overt
Began appearing: and sundry foes
Of order were ready to sting and hurt.
The great majority of our throng
Believed in order; but bye and bye
One Satan-commissioned apostle of wrong
A cinder may be, in the public eye.
And lawlessness has contagions of soul,
Like any disease, when stern control
Grows fragile.—Our conductor and crew,
Brim-full of “authority” when they knew
That help from the next town was their lot,
Grew milder and meeker when 'twas not,
And offered as pretext (partly true)
That they had enough elsewise to do,
In toiling to bring relief in sight,
And delve us out of our awkward plight.