4.
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions
of diseased corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them
at last.
DESPAIRING CRIES.
1.
Despairing cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, The sad voice of Death—the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed, uncertain, "The Sea I am quickly to sail: come tell me, Come tell me where I am speeding—tell me my destination."
2.
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you;
I approach, hear, behold—the sad mouth, the look out of the eyes, your
mute inquiry,
"Whither I go from the bed I recline on, come tell me."
Old age, alarmed, uncertain—A young woman's voice, appealing to me for
comfort;
A young man's voice, "Shall I not escape?"
THE CITY DEAD-HOUSE
By the City Dead-House, by the gate,
As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangour,
I curious pause—for lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought;
Her corpse they deposit unclaimed, it lies on the damp brick pavement.
The divine woman, her body—I see the body—I look on it alone,
That house once full of passion and beauty—all else I notice not;
Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odours morbific
impress me;
But the house alone—that wondrous house—that delicate fair house—that
ruin!
That immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built,
Or white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted—or all the
old high-spired cathedrals,
That little house alone, more than them all—poor, desperate house!
Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a Soul! itself a Soul!
Unclaimed, avoided house! take one breath from my tremulous lips;
Take one tear, dropped aside as I go, for thought of you,
Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled! crushed!
House of life—erewhile talking and laughing—but ah, poor house! dead even
then;
Months, years, an echoing, garnished house-but dead, dead, dead!