Pain and Despair

I am gall, I am heartburn.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

It is the blight man was born for, It is Margaret you mourn for.

He thought he saw an Elephant, That practiced on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. “At length I realize,” he said, “The bitterness of Life!”

There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream, Scarcely even a howl or a groan, As the man they called “Ho!” told his story of woe In an antediluvian tone.

God strengthen me to bear myself; That heaviest weight of all to bear, Inalienable weight of care.

Love’s stricken “why” Is all that love can speak— Built of but just a syllable The hugest hearts that break.

Not with a Club, the Heart is broken Nor with a Stone— A Whip so small you could not see it I’ve known To lash the Magic Creature Till it fell.

If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in Vain.

Pain—has an Element of Blank— It cannot recollect When it begun—or if there were A time when it was not—

And that White Sustenance— Despair—

After great pain, a formal feeling comes.

To fight aloud, is very brave— But gallanter, I know Who charge within the bosom The Cavalry of Woe—

Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the Culprit— Life!

Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne.

Thou hast no right to bliss.

I am the wound and the knife! I am the blow and the cheek! I am the limbs and the wheel— The victim and the executioner! 6

A batter’d, wreck’d old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d and nigh to death, I take my way along the island’s edge, Venting a heavy heart.

I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

Logic and sermons never convince, The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.