Come up higher!

Earth! O Earth! thou art my mother.

Mortal man! thou art my brother.

We have shared a mutual sorrow, we have known a common birth—

Yet with all my soul's endeavour,

I will sunder, and forever,

Every tie of human passion, that can bind my soul to earth—

Every slavish tie that binds me to the things of little worth.

Come up higher! cry the Angels—Come, and bid farewell to earth.

From life's overflowing beaker I have drained the bitter draught,

Changing to a maddening ichor in my being as I quaffed.

I have felt the hot blood rushing, o'er its red and rameous path,

Like the molten lava, gushing in its wild, volcanic wrath—

Like a bubbling, boiling geyser, in the regions of the pole—

Like a Scylla or Charybdis, threatening to engulf my soul.

I was wounded by life's arrows in the head and in the heart.

Come up higher! cried the angels, and I hastened to depart.

—By a Spirit