The City Dead-House

BY the City Dead-House, by the gate,
As idly sauntering, wending my way from the clangor,
I curious pause--for lo! an outcast form, a poor dead prostitute brought;
Her corpse they deposit unclaim'd--it lies on the damp brick pavement;
The divine woman, her body--I see the Body--I look on it alone,
That house once full of passion and beauty--all else I notice not;
Nor stillness so cold, nor running water from faucet, nor odors morbific impress me;
But the house alone--that wondrous house--that delicate fair house--that ruin!
That immortal house, more than all the rows of dwellings ever built!
Or white-domed Capitol itself, with majestic figure surmounted--or all the old high-spired cathedrals;
That little house alone, more than them all--poor, desperate house!
Fair, fearful wreck! tenement of a Soul! itself a Soul!
Unclaim'd, avoided house! take one breath from my tremulous lips;
Take one tear, dropt aside as I go, for thought of you,
Dead house of love! house of madness and sin, crumbled! crush'd!
House of life--erewhile talking and laughing--but ah, poor house! dead, even then;
Months, years, an echoing, garnish'd house--but dead, dead, dead.

... from "Autumn Rivulets" in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), which is now in the public domain.

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A project of 'Founder & Chief Editor' Micha Lindemans, the goal of the Encyclopedia Mythica is to create a free online encyclopedia of mythology, folklore, and legend. Like many such internet projects¹, access to the Encyclopedia Mythica is free, with donations accepted² to offset webserver and software costs.

OIf interest to Everything2 noders, the information on the Encyclopedia Mythica site is not in the public domain. In autumn of 2000, permission was secured to leave certain posts copied from that site up, as long as they were annotated: (c) Encyclopedia Mythica, http://www.pantheon.org/. However, wholesale copying from that site to E2 is not permitted. Please do not do so! Contact me, Lord Brawl, for further info, or if you find unattributed work from Encyclopedia Mythica in the E2 database. Thanks!

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Latin phrase: anger is a brief madness.

See also: furor.

A disparaging term for a slow or poorly maintained seagoing vessel.

In a monastery, the monk who is the nominal "second-in-command" to the Abbot, who is in turn the head of the monastery and/or the monastic order that lives there.

A Prior had as much or as little authority as the Abbot gave him, but was usually fairly powerful. The Prior had charge of the monastery while the Abbot was away from the grounds.

A polymer composed of nucleotides, either ribonucleotides or deoxyribonucleotides, joined by covalent bonds. In human chromosomes, DNA can consist of tens of millions of deoxyribonucleotides in a huge single polynucleotide chain.

The study of the formation of structure or shape. Usually, but not always, applied to studies of living tissue. If you're unsnapping the linguistic pointer, go on to genesis.

Directed or steered a ship from the helm. Colloquially, directed or steered any activity or venture, as if at the helm if a ship.

Types of high speed access include DSL, T1 Lines and cable modems.