Classic Poem

Oh, what a wretched, loathsome, thing am I,
Too horrible for earth, or the pure heaven,
Or the bright stars, or the blue smiling sky,--
To look upon again.
Wrap me, oh wrap me, midnight, in your shades;
Shroud me, ye darkness, in your thickest folds;
Oh bury me, ye forests, in your glades,
Which mortal ne'er beholds.
For I am lost, utterly lost,
Cast like the scum upon the wave,
To be for ever wildly tossed,
Till mercy sends a grave.
Hark! now I hear the brutal savage cry--
How horrid sounds to me his barbarous tongue!
I know the words--some wretch is doomed to die,
His tortures are begun.
And see, the savage chief draws near.
He lays his hand--the fiend--on me,
He speaks of love; my eyes are sere,
I cannot weep, I dare not flee.
His brutal arm is round me thrown;
A sickness o'er my senses steals;
My eyeballs swim;
My vision reels;
I seem to him
But a cold corpse alone.

The scene is changed, and I am left alone;
'Tis moonlight,--I would fly, but where, oh, where;
This isle is small, and every spot is known;
Beyond the ocean forms a barrier there.
Ah me! I gazed into a glassy stream,
And straight sprang back with horror and affright;
Was it a phantom, or some hideous dream?
Or what was that most foul appalling sight?
Alas! twas me, but all bespattered o'er,
With fat of victims, and with human gore,
With some foul preparation they had dyed
My skin that once with lillies would have vied,
And they had painted me all o'er, like something
Of their own horrid, wild, imagining.
And now, the warriors say that I am fair,
And that they love me for a forest bride,
That they will feed me with sweet morsels rare,
And clothe me in soft skins, if I abide.
Oh, thou pale moon, that lookest down so calm--
If 'tis the truth, as I have heard them say,
That when poor love-lorn maidens go astray,
And quick are stung with terror and alarm--
That thou wilt look on them, and they straight forget
All they had known, of sorrows and of crimes;
And tho' some call them moon-struck maniacs, yet--
They are so happy, thoughtless of past times.
Oh then, on me, they fellest influence dart;
Madden, in mercy madden, this poor brain;
Oh give forgetfulness, to this sad heart,
Of what is past, and I will smile again;
And sing, and dare the fiends to do their worst,
Who made me what I am, accurst, accurst.