How can I gaze unmov'd on sights like these?
What hideous enervation bids me sit
Here in the shelter of this neighbour pit,
Untroubled, unperturbèd, at mine ease,
And idly, coldly scan
This fearsome relic of what once was man?
Alas! what icy spell hath set
The seal upon warm pity? Whence
This freezing up of every sense?
I think not I lack pitifulness;—I know
That my affections were not ever so;
My heart is not of stone!—And yet
There's something in the feeling of this place,
There's something in the breathing of this air,
Which lets me gaze upon that awful face
Quite passionless; which lets me meet that stare
Most quietly.—Nay, I could touch that hair,
And sicken not to feel it coil and cling
About my fingers. Did occasion press,
Lo! I could spurn it with my foot—that thing
Which lies so nigh!—
Spurn it light-heartedly and pass it by.
So cold, so hard, so seeming pitiless
Am I!
And yet not I alone;—they know full well,
These others, that strange blunting of the heart:
They know the workings of that devil's-art,
Which drains a man's soul dry,
And kills out sensibility!
They know it too, and they can tell
That this distemper strange and fell,
This hideous blotting of the sense,
Creeps on one like a pestilence!
It is some deadly Power of ill
Which overbears all human will!
Some awful influence of the sky,