Great cities there I saw—of
rich and poor,
The palace and the hovel;
mountains, vales,
Forest and field, the desert and the moor,
Tombs of the good and wise
who’d lived in jails,
And seas of denser fluid,
white with sails
Pushed at by currents moving here and
there
And sensible to sight above
the flat
Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange
and fair
The nether world that I was
gazing at
With beating heart from that exalted level,
And—lest I founder—trembling
like the devil!
The cities all were populous: men
swarmed
In public places—chattered,
laughed and wept;
And savages their shining bodies warmed
At fires in primal woods.
The wild beast leapt
Upon its prey and slew it
as it slept.
Armies went forth to battle on the plain
So far, far down in that unfathomed
deep
The living seemed as silent as the slain,
Nor even the widows could
be heard to weep.
One might have thought their shaking was
but laughter;
And, truly, most were married shortly
after.
Above the wreckage of that silent fray
Strange fishes swam in circles,
round and round—
Black, double-finned; and once a little
way
A bubble rose and burst without
a sound
And a man tumbled out upon
the ground.
Lord! ’twas an eerie thing to drift
apace
On that pellucid sea, beneath
black skies
And o’er the heads of an undrowning
race;
And when I woke I said—to
her surprise
Who came with chocolate, for me to drink
it:
“The atmosphere is deeper than you
think it.”
VISIONS OF SIN.
KRASLAJORSK, Siberia, March 29.
“My eyes are better, and I shall
travel slowly toward home.”
Danenhower.
From the regions of the Night,
Coming with recovered sight—
From the spell of darkness free,
What will Danenhower see?
He will see when he arrives,
Doctors taking human lives.
He will see a learned judge
Whose decision will not budge
Till both litigants are fleeced
And his palm is duly greased.
Lawyers he will see who fight
Day by day and night by night;
Never both upon a side,
Though their fees they still divide.
Preachers he will see who teach
That it is divine to preach—
That they fan a sacred fire
And are worthy of their hire.
He will see a trusted wife
(Pride of some good husband’s life)
Enter at a certain door
And—but he will see no more.
He will see Good Templars reel—
See a prosecutor steal,
And a father beat his child.
He’ll perhaps see Oscar Wilde.
From the regions of the Night
Coming with recovered sight—
From the bliss of blindness free,
That’s what Danenhower’ll
see.