Classic Poem

O'er the night-black city gazing, broken by the blaze and spark,
Where the light of human presence seemed more ghastly than the dark,
I beheld the far-off lamp-light mark the tavern and the den,
Till my soul grew sick and weary of the dreary life of men,
" Vain are canons and ideals, vain are creeds and duties all
To the last our blood is tinctured with the madness of the fall,
Onward moves the march of progress, but 'neath all its pride and fame
Flash the same the ruffian's weapons, flash the harlot's eyes the same;
Sin consumes our brethren's spirits, death consumes our brethren's clay,
Blood of our blood boils with passion, bone of our bone wastes away;
And we move among each other, breathing in our human breath
All our ghastly inner knowledge of the law of sin and death,
In our souls the stormy presence of the things without a name,
On our brows the dark confession of the common thought of shame.
On from fathers unto children pass the evils black and fell,
Through the veins of mortal millions course the burning springs of hell.
So I live, my ruin dating to some far ancestral dawn —
Live, and with my human being damn the helpless child unborn.
Oh, to break the cursed fetters, oh, to leave them and be free,
Risen, guiltless, flower-like, star-like, in a land of purity,
Where I then should feel no longer, moving in a silent place,
Throbbing in my human essence all the vileness of my race,
Loose the old brute-bond of nature, let my spirit, girt with wings,
Hover, nameless, formless, sinless, amid everlasting things. "
Through the place, upon my speaking, came a rush of angels' wings,
Bore me through the starry spaces to a place of purer things;
Regions of a golden sunset, 'neath the evening star that lay,
Dark-eyed spirits softly walking in the evening courts of day;
Troops of strange, bright aureoled maidens thronged through mystic glen and grot,
Souls on golden wings went by me, and I looked and knew them not.
In the bowers of purple woodlands spirit-children were at play,
And they scanned me as I passed them and in wonder turned away,
And my soul cried out within me with a bitterer distress,
That one face I loved might meet me in my heavenly loneliness.
Then across my sorrowing spirit came the thought of vanished earth,
Of the fields that knew my childhood, of the love that gave me birth.
" I would give all mystic lilies for a spray of woodland brier,
I would give all saintly glories for a gleam of cottage fire;
I would give all taintless spirits born beyond my earthly ken
For the hand grasp and the welcome of the meanest child of men.
Give me back the earthly contact, homely ill and homely good,
Link me with a race of sinners in the painted bond of blood;
Let me feel a common nature, whence I never can be free,
In whose realm one broad pulsation beats to all eternity.
Let me feel the hands of brothers in the darkness grasping mine,
As we stumble on together from the low to the divine.
Give me back my mortal nature, mortal death and mortal birth,
Keep your mystic, spotless spirits, take me back again to earth. "
Through the place upon my speaking came a rush of angels' wings,
Bore me downward through the space to the place of mortal things;
And I saw once more the city, glimmering with its blaze and spark,
Every light a brother's watchfire, kindled in the silent dark;
And throughout the crowded homesteads, while the hours of sleep endure,
Slept the happy and the starving, slept the sinful and the pure;
And o'er all the darkened city, over hall and hut, and den,
Lay a mute and mighty presence of the brotherhood of men.