POEMS OF JAMES RYDER RANDALL
PALINODIA
Though it leave me ashes, I will thrust
This Etna from my breast,
My times have been tumultuous, they shall know
The ecstacy of rest.
They marred the work of heaven when they scoff’d
My unpolluted truth—
Oh, it was death to feel the venom-dews
Trickling the veins of youth!
My mind was swung in blindness, like a cloud,
O’er caverns of despair;
My soul was a dead Carthage, with a doomed
And baffled Roman there.
Stung by the blare and trespass of the world,
I cursed it, on my knees,
Where, in its cell, monastic Amazon
Hymns to the cloistered trees.
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