THE APPARITION
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Weaver, Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne)
In man towards man—the soul’s caress—
The negatives of flesh should prove
Analogies of non-cordialness
In spirit.
Why then
Remaineth to me what? the pen?
Dead feather of ethereal life!
Nor efficacious much, save when
It makes some fallacy more rife.
My kin—I blame them not at heart—
Would have me act some routine part.
Subserving family, and dreams
Alien to me—illusive schemes.
This world clean fails me: still I yearn.
Me then it surely does concern
Some other world to find. But where?
In creed? I do not find it there.
This side the dark and hollow bound
Lies there no unexplored rich ground?
Some other world: well, there’s the New—
Ah, joyless and ironic too!
Ay, Democracy
Lops, lops; but where’s her planted bed?
The future, what is that to her
Who vaunts she’s no inheritor?
’Tis in her mouth, not in her heart.
The past she spurns, though ’tis the past
From which she gets her saving part—
That Good which lets her evil last.
Behold her whom the panders crown,
Harlot on horseback, riding down
The very Ephesians who acclaim
This great Diana of ill fame!
Arch strumpet of an impious age,
Upstart from ranker villainage:
Asia shall stop her at the least
That old inertness of the East.
But in the New World things make haste:
Not only men, the state lives fast—
Fast breed the pregnant eggs and shells,