They kept the world’s birthday and brighten’d together! 
For I loved them in terror, and constantly dreaded
That the earth where I trod, and the cave where I bedded,
The face I might dote on, should live out the lease
Of the charm that created, and suddenly cease: 
And I gave me to slumber, as if from one dream
To another—­each horrid,—­and drank of the stream
Like a first taste of blood, lest as water I quaff’d
Swift poison, and never should breathe from the draught,—­
Such drink as her own monarch husband drain’d up
When he pledged her, and Fate closed his eyes in the cup. 
And I pluck’d of the fruit with held breath, and a fear
That the branch would start back and scream out in my ear;
For once, at my suppering, I plucked in the dusk
An apple, juice-gushing and fragrant of musk;
But by daylight my fingers were crimson’d with gore,
And the half-eaten fragment was flesh at the core;
And once—­only once—­for the love of its blush,
I broke a bloom bough, but there came such a gush
On my hand, that it fainted away in weak fright,
While the leaf-hidden woodpecker shriek’d at the sight;
And oh! such an agony thrill’d in that note,
That my soul, startling up, beat its wings in my throat,
As it long’d to be free of a body whose hand
Was doom’d to work torments a Fury had plann’d!

There I stood without stir, yet how willing to flee,
As if rooted and horror-turn’d into a tree,—­
Oh! for innocent death,—­and to suddenly win it,
I drank of the stream, but no poison was in it;
I plunged in its waters, but ere I could sink,
Some invisible fate pull’d me back to the brink;
I sprang from the rock, from its pinnacle height,
But fell on the grass with a grasshopper’s flight;
I ran at my fears—­they were fears and no more,
For the bear would not mangle my limbs, nor the boar,
But moan’d—­all their brutalized flesh could not smother
The horrible truth,—­we were kin to each other!

They were mournfully gentle, and group’d for relief,
All foes in their skin, but all friends in their grief: 
The leopard was there,—­baby-mild in its feature;
And the tiger, black-barr’d, with the gaze of a creature
That knew gentle pity; the bristle-back’d boar,
His innocent tusks stain’d with mulberry gore;
And the laughing hyena—­but laughing no more;
And the snake, not with magical orbs to devise
Strange death, but with woman’s attraction of eyes;
The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shine
Through his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine;
And the elephant stately, with more than its reason,
How thoughtful in sadness! but this is no season
To reckon them up from the lag-bellied toad
To the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load. 
There were woes of all shapes, wretched forms, when I came,
That hung down their heads with a human-like shame;
The elephant hid in the boughs, and the bear
Shed over his eyes the dark veil of his hair;
And the womanly soul turning sick with disgust,
Tried to vomit herself from her serpentine crust;
While all groan’d their groans into one at their lot,
As I brought them the image of what they were not.