Pain and Despair

Man hands on misery to man.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

I saw their starved lips in the gloam

I see a lily on thy brow

Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know,

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

Muero porque no muero.

If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

He saw; but blasted with excess of light,

To each his suff’rings, all are men,

Love is a universal migraine.

None but the lonely heart

To me … [ The Waste Land ] was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.

Midnight shakes the memory

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

This is the death of air.

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

The intolerable wrestle