To Live A Life Half Dead, A

Wherefore Did Nature Pour Her Bounties Forth With Such A Full And Unwithdrawing Hand, Covering The Earth With Odours, Fruits, Flocks, Thronging The Seas With Spawn Innumerable, But All To Please And Sate The Curious Taste?

Who Would Not, Finding Way, Break Loose From Hell, . . . . And Boldly Venture To Whatever Place Farthest From Pain?

So Glistered The Dire Snake , And Into Fraud Led Eve, Our Credulous Mother, To The Tree Of Prohibition, Root Of All Our Woe.

Where Glowing Embers Through The Room Teach Light To Counterfeit A Gloom.

But Who Is This, What Thing Of Sea Or Land,- Female Of Sex It Seems,- That So Bedeck'd, Ornate, And Gay, Comes This Way Sailing Like A Stately Ship Of Tarsus, Bound For Th' Isles Of Javan Or Gadire, With All Her Bravery On, And Tackle Trim, Sails Fill'd, And Streamers Waving, Courted By All The Winds That Hold Them Play, An Amber Scent Of Odorous Perfume Her Harbinger?