Of criminals--To me, any judge, or any juror, is equally criminal--and any
reputable person is also--and the President is also.
_THE DARK SIDE._
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected,
gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer of
young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid--
I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and
prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be
killed, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
labourers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--all the meanness and agony without end, I, sitting, look out
upon;
See, hear, and am silent.
_MUSIC._
I heard you, solemn-sweet pipes of the organ, as last Sunday morn I passed
the church;
Winds of autumn!--as I walked the woods at dusk, I heard your
long-stretched sighs, up above, so mournful;
I heard the perfect Italian tenor, singing at the opera--I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartette singing.
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