Here mockeries of mortal being were revelling,
Here shrieked the song of unmolested espousals,
Writhing orgies of man the carnal
Of herds that are huddled and wedged together
By sharing the pangs of inherited sins.
Days, straggling levies of muffled martyrs,
Breathed out plague on the torrid paving
With stench of serried throngs in decay,—
Of beings unperished. . .
Despair cheek by jowl with rejoicing glittered,
fruit of their thoughts in their gaze
Like lamps consumed by tardy ages
Of dismantled souls on a lengthy journey,
Beings remoulding their birth in creation. . .
And roaring from the city cess-pool, it carried
The first poisoned corpses in a greenish slime
It carried them forth, roaring a burial requiem
To torrid sands of days without hope. . .
Whither away, O my soul? Already I behold
New Sorrows plunging in thee from afar
Pinnacles of their loftiest turrets. . .
"Overmastered Sorrows" (1897).
