ing firm unseen feelers 'round my neck
A binding, bruising coil ...
The waters burn and boil;
The fire-flies the dappled darkness fleck
With impish dabs of blazing wizard's oil ...
Deep, deep into the black eye of the beck
I stare, magnetic fixed, and little reck
If all the writhing shadow slips,
Dripping around me, to the eyes and hips,
Where grinning murder leers with lupine lips.

7.

What can it mean for me? what have I done to her?
I in our freedom of love as a sun to her;
She to our liberty goddess and slumberless
Moon of the stars shining silver and numberless:
Who on my life, that was thorny and showery,
Came--and made dewyness; smiled--and made flowery;
Mine! the affinitized one of humanity:
Mine! the elected of soul over vanity--
What have I done to her, what have I done!

What can it mean for me? what have I said to her?
I, who have idolized, worshipped, and pled to her;
Sung for her, laughed for her, sorrowed and sighed for her,
Lived for her, hated and gladly had died for her!
See; she has written me thus! she has written me--
Sooner would dagger or serpent had smitten me!
Would they had shrivelled or ever they'd read of it!
Eyes, that are wide to the bitterest dread of it--
What have I said to her, what have I said!

What shall I make of it, I, who am trembling
Fearful of loss?--Oh, enamored, dissembling
Flame!--of the candle that burning, but guttering,
Flatters the moth that comes circling and fluttering
Out of the summer night; trusting, importunate,
Quitting cool flowers for this--O unfortunate!--
Such has she been to me making me such to her,
Slaying me, saying I never was much to her--
What shall I make of it, what can I make!

Love, in thy everglades, moaning and motionless
Look, I have fallen; the evil is potionless:
I, with no thought but the heavens that lock us in,
Set naked feet 'mid the cottonmouth, moccasin
Under wild-roses, the Cherokee, eying me:--
In the sweet blue with the egrets that, flying me,
Loosened like blooms from magnolias, rose slenderly
White and pale pink; where the mocking-bird tenderly
Sang, making vistas of mosses melodious,
Wandered unheeding my steps in the odious
Slime that was venom; I followed the fiery
Violet curve of thy star falling wiry--
So was I lost