O Liberty...! Is It Well To Leave

After A Debauch Of Thunder-shower, The Weather Takes The Pledge And Signs It With A Rainbow.

So Precious Life Is! Even To The Old, The Hours Are As A Miser's Coins!

Imagine All Human Beings Swept Off The Face Of The Earth, Excepting One Man. Imagine This Man In Some Vast City, New York Or London. Imagine Him On The Third Or Fourth Day Of His Solitude Sitting In A House And Hearing A Ring At The Door-bell!

Turn On Its Noiseless Hinges, Delicate Sleep!

Those Forms We Fancy Shadows, Those Strange Lights That Flash On Dank Morasses, The Quick Wind That Smites Us By The Roadside—are The Night's Innumerable Children. Unconfined By Shroud Or Coffin, Disembodied Souls, Uneasy Spirits, Steal Into The Air From Festering Graveyards When The Curfew Tolls At The Day's Death... And Wheresoever Murders Have Been Done, In Stately Palaces Or Lonesome Woods, Where'er A Soul Has Sold Itself And Lost Its High Inheritance, There, Hovering, Broods Some Sad, Invisible, Accurséd Ghost!