Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/295

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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).