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Part of the cluster WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH.

THOUGHT.

AS I sit with others at a great feast, suddenly while the music is  
 playing,
To my mind, (whence it comes I know not,) spectral in mist of  
 a wreck at sea,
Of certain ships, how they sail from port with flying streamers and  
 wafted kisses, and that is the last of them,
Of the solemn and murky mystery about the fate of the President, Of the flower of the marine science of fifty generations founder'd  
 off the Northeast coast and going down—of the steamship  
 Arctic going down,
Of the veil'd tableau—women gather'd together on deck, pale,  
 heroic, waiting the moment that draws so close—O the  
 moment!
A huge sob—a few bubbles—the white foam spirting up—and  
 then the women gone,
Sinking there while the passionless wet flows on—and I now  
 pondering, Are those women indeed gone?
Are souls drown'd and destroy'd so? Is only matter triumphant?

Part of the cluster WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH.

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