rth lay void and barren,
And sun and stars were straightway drenched in gloom.
The landscape, glad erewhile, lay dark, autumnal;
Each grove was sere, each flower stem was broken;
Within the frozen sense my strength lay dead,
All joy, all courage withered within me.

"What is to me reality--its dumb,
Dead bulk, inert, oppressive, grim, and crude?
How hope has paled, alas, with roseate hue!
And memory, the heavenly blue, grown hoary!
And even poesy! Its acrobatic
Exertions, leaps--they pall upon my sense;
Its bright mirage can satisfy no soul--
Light skimmings from the surface fair of things.

"Still I will praise thee, oh, thou human race.
God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking!
Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show;
The name of one is man, the other's woman!
Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty,
'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat.
Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast
Is Cain's foul mark upon thy forehead branded.

"A mark quite legible, writ by God's finger;
Why did I fail ere now to heed that sign?
A smell of death pervades all human life,
And poisons spring's sweet breath and summer's splendor.
Out of the grave that odor is exhaling.
The grave is sealed and marble guards its freight,
But still corruption is the breath of life,
Eludes its guard and scatters everywhere.

"Oh, watchman, tell me now the night's dark hour!
Will it then never wane unto its end?
The half-devoured moon is gliding, gliding,
The tearful stars forever onward go,
My pulse beats fast as in the time of youth,
But ne'er beats out the hours of torment sore.
How long, how endless is each pulse-beat's pain!
Oh, my consumed, oh, my bleeding heart.

"My heart! Nay in my bosom is no heart,
There's but an urn that holds life's burnt-out ashes;
Have pity on me, thou green mother Earth,
And hide that urn full soon in thy cool breast.
In air it crumbles, moulders; earth's deep woe
Has in the earth, I ween, at last an end;
And Time's poor foundling, here in school constrained,
Finds then, perchance, beyond the sun--a father."

[40] The poem is written in the _ottava rime_, but in order to
preserve the sense intact I have rendered it in blank verse.

A physical disease which seems to have baffled the skil