The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1865-09-15
THE VOICE OF THE PEsTILENCE

THE VOICE OF THE PESTILENCE
This splendid poem was written in 1881, on
the approach of the cholera from the East to-
ward the western parts of Europe, and it is ap.
propriate to its renewed apparition and west.
ward progress, as mentioned in recent jour-
nails 4
Breathless the course of the Pale White Horse,
Bearing the CHASTITY Form
Rapid and dark as the spectre bark
When it sweeps before the storm!
Baiefully bright through the torrid night
Ensanguined mete0rs glare
Fiercely the spires of volcanic fires
Stream on the sulphurous air!
Shades of the slain through the Murderer's
brain
Fit terrible and drear-
Shadowy and swift the black storm drift
Doth trample the atmosphere!
But swifter than all, with darker pail
Of Terror around my path,
have arisen from my lampless prison
Slave of the high Gods wrath
A deep Voice went from the Firmament
And it pierced the caves of Earth
Therefore came on my wings of fame
From the dark place of my birth!
And it is said: go from the South to the
North,
Over yon wandering ball
Sin is the King of that doomed Thing.
And the sin-beguiled must fall"
Forth from the Gate of thy Uncreate, 3
From the portals of the Abyss
From the caverns dim where vague Forms
swim,
And shapeless Chaos is.
From Hade's womb-from the joyless tomb
OF Erebus and Old Might F.
From the unseen deep where Death and Sleep
Brood in their mystic might
come-I come-befOre me are dumb ~
The nations aghast for dread
Lo! I have passed, as the desert blast
And the millions of Earth lie dead
A voice of fear from the hemisphere
Tracketh me where fly a.. -
Earth weeping aloud foi her widowhood-
A wild and desolate cry!
Thrones and dominions beneath my pinions
Cover like meanest things- y .,.-.7
Melt from my presence the pride and the
pleaaance aes 81.
Of pallorstricken kings;
Sorrow and mourning supremacy scorning,
My throne is the b0undless air.
Ny chosen shroud is the dark planned cloud
Which the whirling breezes bear!
Was not born on the wings Of the morn
From the jungles of JessOre, ss.,sl
Over the plain of the purple main ,, -f
To the far Mauritian shore?
To the isles which sleep on the sunbright deep
Of cOral-paved sea; o, rt.s s.H--
Where the blue waves weller beneath the shell
ter
Of heavens serenity?
From the womb of the waters, athirst for
slaughters.
rose that thirst to safe
These green isles are graves in the waste of
waves. .
Their beauty Is desolate!
From the wild Erythrean, the noise ct my
Pecan .
Rolled on the Southern blast
Eternal Taurus made answering chorus,
From the glaciers lone and vast!
Did mot pass his granite mass,
And the rigid Caucasian hill
Over burning sands-over frost-chained lands
Borne at my own wild will !?
Then bark to the beat of my fastening feet,
Thou shrined In the sea-
Where are thy dreams that the ocean streams
Would be safety unto thee?
Awaken! awaken! my wings are shaken
Athwart the troubled sky
Streams the red glance OF my meteor lance
And the glare of mine meteor eye!
Hearken, oh hearkenl my coming shall
darken
The light of the festal cheer:
In thy torm.rocked home, on the Northern
foam,
Nursing of Ocean--hear!