A Reproach

The weltering anguish of a tortured land, A sky of lead, cumbered with mountainous clouds, Through which a moon steers, smiling as she goes, And--stretching to the void of distance--Thou Oldest of murderers! What ghastly croon, What dismal tale of past iniquities, What unremorseful dark soliloquy Moan’st thou and mutterest thus continually? Listen! There is a secret register Which in the hollow pause ’twixt wave and wave Records thy doings for unnumbered years; The treacherous tale of sudden summer gales; Of furious autumn; of black winter nights; Of man’s first advent, man’s harsh destiny, Of boding calms, and madly lashing storms, Of foundered ships, wild prayers, and drowning cries. That chronicle, dark tumbling one, is thine!

Well may’st thou groan and hourly lash thyself, Yet not for all thy lashings shalt thou ’scape, Nor shall thy myriad waters purge thy guilt. While she, thy dainty partner, up aloft, Pearly accomplice of a million crimes, From cloud to cloud steers on, how smilingly!