James Thomson

In order to ensure absolute equality (which perchance cannot co-exist with essential distinctions) the new race may demand .either that sex be abolished, or that every human being be of both sexes. Perhaps the very perfecting process will …

But, so far as we can see, so long as the present laws and constitution of nature continue there must still remain a vast amount of really inevitable suffering for mankind, without reckoning beastkind, birdkind, fishkind, insectkind, …

[Nature] turns us out into the world without giving us any choice in the matter; though all other suffrages and freedoms are perfectly insignificant in comparison with that of which we are thus deprived, an effective and enlightened vote …

And all sad scenes and thoughts and feelings vanish In that sweet sleep no power can ever banish, That one best sleep which never wakes again.

The mighty river flowing dark and deep, With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides, Vague-sounding through the City’s sleepless sleep, Is named the River of the Suicides.

The world rolls round for ever like a mill; It grinds out death and life and good and ill; It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

Yet I strode on austere; No hope could have no fear.

As I came through the desert thus it was, As I came through the desert: All was black, In heaven no single star, on earth no track; A brooding hush without a stir or note; The air so thick it clotted in my throat.

The City is of Night, but not of Sleep; There sweet sleep is not for the weary brain; The pitiless hours like years and ages creep, A night seems termless hell.

The street-lamps burn amidst the baleful glooms, Amidst the soundless solitudes immense Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.

For life is but a dream whose shapes return, Some frequently, some seldom, some by night And some by day.

The City is of Night; perchance of Death, But certainly of Night; for never there Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath After the dewy dawning's cold grey air.

Yet why evoke the spectres of black night To blot the sunshine of exultant years?

The wine of Love is music, And the feast of Love is song: And when Love sits down to the banquet, Love sits long:Sits long and rises drunken, But not with the feast and the wine; He reeleth with his own heart,

Give a man a girl he can love, As I, O my love, love thee; And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate, At home, on land, on sea.

Give a man a horse he can ride, Give a man a boat he can sail; And his rank and wealth, his strength and health, On sea nor shore shall fail.

We will rush ever on without fear; Let the goal be far, the flight be fleet! For we carry the Heavens with us, dear, While the Earth slips from our feet!

As we rush, as we rush in the train, The trees and the houses go wheeling back, But the starry heavens above that plain Come flying on our track.

What good, what use, what aim? What compensation for the throes of birth And death in all its frame? What conscious life hath ever paid its cost? From Nothingness to Nothingness — all lost!