aos hiss;
And thought, that moved in time no more,
Wept on some wild, pre-natal shore.--

Appalled, the boundless vision burst
Through yawning gulfs of gloom;
To human hunger, human thirst
Infinite hell did loom;
Infinite bale to vision burst
In tracts of nebulous bloom;
And life through peril, lorn, accurst,
Passed on from doom to doom.

The depths were full of throes unknown,
Weird wastes of vomited fire;
Wild mists of thunderous flame were blown
Athwart eclipse; I heard the groan
Of travailing worlds stupendous thrown
Through chaos to expire:
My spirit, cowed with vastness dire,
Gazed, poised in space,--alone,--
Alone as a haunted life that lies
On the death-brink when a dread past cries,
And the live dark burns with eternal eyes.

Rang, terror-wrung from shrivelled pride:
"Oh loneliest of the dead,
Thou with the deeply riven side,
And with the branded head,
Lo, I, in blasphemy that died,
Do envy all the dead,

"And, fleeing self-hood, fain would die--
But this can never be!
This mortal nevermore can lie
To immortality.--
Oh! hearken to my ghostly cry,
Lone ghost of Calvary!"--
I was my own infinity;
The cry, the echo I ...

Oh brother, with the bone-sealed breast;
Brother in hope, in shame,
In joy, in sorrow, east and west
We know, but man, earth's awful guest,
Is vastness with a name,--
Is spirit, hungry in the quest
Of spirit whence he came ...

On through the void I shuddering fled,
Immortal, seeking to be dead,
With God behind me, God ahead,
Pursued, encompassed, lost,--and led ...

God's outcasts only have their ease:
But I was not as these.
From deep to deep my soul was blown
Like sin toward judgment, ever alone
With the Eye unseen, and the Hand unknown.

Sad nature strained the leash in vain,
And, flying, fled not; ever the chain
Of the Fear that followed; ever again
Relentless pity, guardian pain ...

Slow time a sad nepenthe brought,
Numb poignance with no sigh,
When body, dim with sorrow, sought
Day with a dead man's eye.--

As from far off I darkly saw:
I lay as doomed men lie:
A lamb beneath a lion's paw,
Mute-meek, that lamb was I;
My soul I felt the monster gnaw,
I hea