THE DARK SIDE.
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of
young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—
I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be
killed, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
labourers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—all the meanness and agony without end, I, sitting, look out
upon;
See, hear, and am silent.
MUSIC.
I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I passed
the church;
Winds of autumn!—as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your
long-stretched sighs, up above, so mournful;
I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera—I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartette singing.
—Heart of my love! you too I heard, murmuring low, through one of the
wrists around my head;
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last night
under my ear.
WHEREFORE?
O me! O life!—of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled with the foolish;
Of myself for ever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and
who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle
ever renewed;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around
me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
ANSWER.
That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.
QUESTIONABLE.
As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,
The confession I made I resume—what I said to you and the open air I
resume.
I know I am restless, and make others so;
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death;
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped
artilleryman;)
For I confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them;
I am more resolute because all have denied me than I could ever have been
had all accepted me;
I heed not, and have never heeded, either experience, cautions, majorities,
nor ridicule;
And the threat of what is called hell is little or nothing to me;
And the lure of what is called heaven is little or nothing to me.
—Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge
you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quelled and defeated.