Page:Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems - Randall - 1908.pdf/140



Though it leave me ashes, I will thrust
 * This Etna from my breast,

My times have been tumultuous, they shall know
 * The ecstacy of rest.

They marred the work of heaven when they scoff’d
 * My unpolluted truth—

Oh, it was death to feel the venom-dews
 * Trickling the veins of youth!

My mind was swung in blindness, like a cloud,
 * O’er caverns of despair;

My soul was a dead Carthage, with a doomed
 * And baffled Roman there.

Stung by the blare and trespass of the world,
 * I cursed it, on my knees,

Where, in its cell, monastic Amazon
 * Hymns to the cloistered trees.