obs 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
the young woman;
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
laborers, 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."

Only once does he shame and rebuke the offender; then he holds up to him
"a hand-mirror."

"Hold it up sternly! See this it sends back! (who is it? is it you?)
Outside fair costume,--within, ashes and filth.
No more a flashing eye,--no more a sonorous voice or springy step,
Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
No brain, no heart left, no magnetism of sex;
Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!"

The poet's way is so different from the moralist's way! The poet confesses
all, loves all,--has no preferences. He is moral only in his results. We
ask ourselves, Does he breathe the air of health? Can he stand the test of
nature? Is he tonic and inspiring? That he shocks us is nothing. The first
touch of the sea is a shock. Does he toughen us, does he help make
arterial blood?

All that men do and are guilty of attracts him. Their vices and
excesses,--he would make these his own also. He is jealous lest he be
thought better than other men,--lest he seem to stand apart from even
criminals and offenders. When the passion for human brotherhood is upon
him, he is balked by nothing; he goes down into the social mire to find
his lovers and equals. In the pride of our morality and civic well-being,
this phase of