I am left alone on the land, she is all alone in the sea,

If a curse meant aught, I would curse you for not having let me be.

Visions of youth

it seems;

XI.

for my brain was drunk with the water,

I had past into perfect quiet at length out of pleasant

dreams,

And the transient trouble of drowning- what was it when match'd with the pains

Of the hellish heat of a wretched life rushing back thro' the veins?

XII.

Why should I live? One son had forged on his father and

fled,

And if I believed in a God, I would thank Him, the other

is dead,

And there was a baby-girl, that had never look'd on the

light:

Happiest she of us all, for she past from the night to the night.

XIII.

But the crime, if a crime, of her eldest-born, her glory, her

boast,

Struck hard at the tender heart of the mother, and broke it

almost;

Tho', glory and shame dying out forever in endless time, Does it matter so much whether crown'd for a virtue, or hang'd for a crime?

XIV.

And ruin'd by him, by him, I stood there, naked, amazed
In a world of arrogant opulence, fear'd myself turning

crazed,

And I would not be mock'd in a madhouse! and she, the delicate wife,

With a grief that could only be cured, if cured, by the sur geon's knife,

XV.

Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of

pain,

If every man die forever, if all his griefs are in vain,

And the homeless planet at length will be wheel'd thro' the silence of space,

Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race,

When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last brother-worm will have fled

From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth that is dead?

XVI.

Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings?

O yes,

For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular

press,

When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,

And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill and crows to the sun and the moon,

Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turn'd into blood,

And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good ;

For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from hand to hand

We have knelt in your know-all chapel too looking over the

sand.

XVII.

What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well?

Infinite cruelty rather that made everlasting Hell,

Made us, foreknew us, foredoom'd us, and does what He

will with his own;

Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan!

XVIII.

Hell? if the souls of men were immortal, as men have been told,

The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would

yearn for his gold,

And so there were Hell forever! but were there a God as

you say,

His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanish'd away.

XIX.

Ah yet I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloom-.

If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought!

XX.

Blasphemy! whose is the fault? is it mine? for why would you save

A madman to vex you with wretched words, who is best in his grave?

Blasphemy ay, why not, being damn'd beyond hope of grace?

O would I were yonder with her, and away from your faith and your face!

Blasphemy! true! I have scared you pale with my scandalous talk,

But the blasphemy to my mind lies all in the way that you walk.

XXI.

Hence she is gone! can I stay? can I breathe divorced from the Past?

You needs must have good lynx-eyes if I do not escape you

at last.

Our orthodox coroner doubtless will find it a felo-de-se, And the stake and the cross-road, fool, if you will, does it matter to me?

VASTNESS.

I.

MANY a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a

vanish'd face,

Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust of a vanish'd race.

Raving politics, never at rest

tory runs,

II.

as this poor earth's pale his

What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?

III.

Lies upon this side, lies upon that side, truthless violence mourn'd by the Wise,

Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular torrent of lies upon lies;

IV.

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of army and fleet,

Death for the right cause, death for the wrong cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat;

V.

Innocence seethed in her mother's milk, and Charity setting the martyr aflame;

Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, and recks not to ruin a realm in her name.

VI.

Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of doubts that darken the schools;

Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow'd up by her vassal legion of fools;

VII.

Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice and her vintage, her silk and her corn;

Desolate offing, sailorless harbors, famishing populace, wharves forlorn ;

VIII.

Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom in the evening, Life at a close;

Pleasure who flaunts on her wide down-way with her flying robe and her poison'd rose;

IX.

Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleasure, a worm which writhes all day, and at night

Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light;

X.

Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; Flattery gilding the rift of a throne;

Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; honest Poverty, bare to the bone;

XI.

Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubilant challenge to Time and to Fate;

Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the laurel'd graves of the Great;

XII.

Love for the maiden crown'd with marriage, no regrets for aught that has been,

Household happiness, gracious children, debtless competence, golden mean;