Your forms are skeletons,
  Whose bony hands with mortal fingers play,
  Where grinning skulls are heaping on the way,
  And airy specters meet the timid ones;
  Death drops his arrows from your sullen skies,
  Destruction dances in your noisome shades,
  And in the dreadful darkness of your glades
      The horrid shriekings rise.

      There in your cycles are
  Dark valleys where my weary feet must go,
  Though devils of disaster hurl and throw
  Their awful sorrows from the fortunes far;
  No hands of pleasure can presume to part
  The clouded curtains of impending care,
  And hissing serpents of insane despair
      Pour poison in my heart.

      O, years that are to be,
  Among your solitudes I, dreaming, grope;
  My life’s the shade of unaccomplished hope,
  My heart’s a ghoul that feeds on agony! 
  No strains of music call my tears away,
  No smiling star illumes the awful night;
  Ambition weeps; my soul draws without light
      My shameless feet astray!

      No soothing welcome floats
  Between your marble lips, nor sweetly rise
  The tender songs of gentle melodies
  From croaking caverns of your iron throats;
  But from your dirges of destructive pain,
  Wild clash of wretched sound is borne to me,
  Where death and failure, tears and misery,
      In robes or anguish reign.

      But my heart hopes to find
  Some infant joy for woes that sorrow did,
  Some faded garland on some coffin lid,
  To cheer the wildness of my broken mind;
  Some angel pleasures in your realms must roll,
  Some laughing life, some music, in your glooms,
  Shall gladness give, amid your ghostly tombs,
      Mad Future, to my soul!

IF WE DON’T OR IF WE DO.

  If we don’t or if we do. 
  What’s the odds to me and you? 
  Fame is e’er a heartless jade,
  And her slaves are poorly paid;
  Weary hearts and soul’s distress
  Are the prices of success;
  All our stations sadness view,—­
  If we don’t or if we do.

  If we don’t or if we do,
  Our deservings will accrue;
  We must pay the fullest price,
  For each virtue and each vice,
  And each life for every thing
  Must an equal portion bring;
  Justice shall our deeds review,
  If we don’t or if we do.

  If we don’t or if we do,
  Fortune to our worth is true;
  Trophies that enshroud our clay,
  Scarce are worth the price we pay;
  Shame doth small endeavors share,
  Fame and glory, toil and care;
  Earth floats but an equal crew,
  If we don’t or if we do.

  If we don’t or if we do,
  What’s the diff’rence ’tween the two,
  When our souls have gone to God
  And we sleep beneath the sod? 
  Kindred grasses wave and creep
  Where the prince and pauper sleep;
  We shall have our six-feet-two,
  If we don’t or if we do.