IT was like to a child,-slender the springletGlistening among the coarse-grained sand—In gigantic, unpeopled stillnessOld Earth brought it forthUnder the trees coloured with mistletoe,Under twilight depths of shaggy firs,In gigantic stillness it sang through the grassFrom serried wedges of lime-stone rocks.Unwieldy black pine-stems were lyingLike transparencies of the yellowish sunUpon its crinkled surface.Their bloated roots were like swarthy leeches,And wavering shadow came only to drink of it . . .While in glory it sang and in rhythm of life. . . .
O passing winsome it was in the murk of the night,When forests were ending their song unto it,Into the moonlit plain it poured from the hollow,How the black clattering mills seized itCraftily into their unwieldy circlings,That, grievously crushed into lissom dust,It screeched and simmered, stormily tumbling!
As if stunned, upon tip-toe, it slipped through the grass,As if stunned, softly upon tip-toe,To sorrow-girt coverts, where the silver of the moonSoldered the spare birches to their ground-plotsAnd osiered fields in the twilit hazes.
O, was it fain to set the glorious vaultage of heavenAnd all creation glittering in warm tranquillity,The song of the stars chanted to the Unknown,Aquiver upon its surfaceAnd glory of night ere birth of the dayAnd its golden foot-print?
Came forth then the first tortured mortalUnto the radiant sheen of shifting vapours,From mists the vagrant hobbled over the pastures . . .Slipped his bloodstained tatters over his feetLivid with foulness and canker, in which Death squatted,He plunged his running wounds therein . . .And the sky-line grew dim and dim afar,Thickening mists in the fens, where a bird faltered,Canker of grave-yards, stench of mortal lodgmentsWafted from the banks a burial requiem. . . .
Through gulleys leaked foul contagions,Mouldering in quagmires, from the rended liningLike ulcers they burst forth therein, meadows,Waterlogged marsh-land they lulled there to slumber,In the wake of the wind sobbed a burial requiem. . . .Here it floated into the city cess-pool. . . . WindowsHurled their sheds of light upon its surfaceAnd outlines of homesteads were trailing eerilyOn the wrinkled watersAnd trees dipped their sickly green, garlands loosened from cornicesStraggled down in the tarnished mirror of the waters.
Here mockeries of mortal being were revelling,Here shrieked the song of unmolested espousals, Writhing orgies of man the carnalOf herds that are huddled and wedged togetherBy the shared pangs of inherited sins.
Days, straggling levies of muffled martyrs,Breathed out plague on the torrid pavingWith stench of serried throngs in decay,—Of beings ill-nurtured. . . .
Eyes shone with innermost despair cheek by jowl with rejoicingLike lamps consumed by the slow passing of ages,By the lengthy journey of exhausted souls,By the loftier re-birth of beings . . .
And roaring from the city cesspool, venom-laden,It carried the first corpses, amid greenish slimeIt carried them forth, roaring a burial requiem,Unto the torrid sands of days without hope. . . .
Whither away, O my soul? Already I beholdNew Sorrows plunging into thee from afarPinnacles of their loftiest turrets. . . .Sorrows Overcome (1897)
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