The Eye's Witness to Sin

The soul within, breathing in sinful flesh
      The dungeon air of uncongenial vice,
Fades, sickening, from the eyes that, pure and fresh,
      Betrays too well at what a fearful price
Ye buy low pleasure of the extortioner, Sin;
And, as it fades, yet other souls begin
      To peep and chatter o’er the prison bars,—
Demon, or ghoul, or imp with idiot grin!
            For, as among the stars
            Prince Uriel guards the sun,
Standing alone amid its orbèd splendor;
And Queen Astartè, beautiful and tender
      Leans out from Hesperus; or, lost to her,
      Morn sees it burn round rebel Lucifer:
So looks from every eye some unseen one,—
      Angel of love and light, or darker sprit,
      Fallen from God, of those whom evil merit
      Sent wandering, to find an alien home
In tortured bosoms, and with souls undone,
      Roaming to find, and finding, still who roam!

The beautiful beings, who on earth inherit
      The kingdom and the crown already come,
Keep, through the stir and care of evil days,
The eye’s pure rest and childhood’s sinless gaze,
      Clear as a soul refined by martyrdom.
But, ah! how soon an altered glance betrays
      The usurping spirit,—dead and fired by turns,
      As passion-quenched or passion lit it burns!

When from her throne the angel soul retires,
      Slowly she faces; and ever and anon
A sad smile trembles through the wasteful fires,
      Ere the last gleam of purity has gone.
Then the all-dimmed or evil-gleaming eye,
      With wicked gloating or a leaden stare,
Through the dull ashes of its idiotcy [sic]
Mocks with an equal ruin the clear glance
      Of visible godhood, once incarnate there,
Where a white soul flashed out the silent dance
Of more than speech in musical radiance,
      Teaching her twin orbs in their deeper zones
To match Orion’s burning adamants
      Or starry-eyed Arcturus and his sons.

Now, seethed in feverous sin’s envenomed cup,
      Stare out the dull orbs, godless and opaque.
Dead virtue’s reeking pestilence steams up,
      And blurs their crystals, until death could take
No trophy there, nor his insatiate son,
Corruption, find wherewith to revel on.