Pain and Despair

And almost everyone when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like Him.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold.

Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!

And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense smoke!

“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?

Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.

My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin’d pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship, tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky. 2

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.

Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose, Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart Made purple riot.

The music, yearning like a God in pain.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, And went all naked to the hungry shark; For them his ears gush’d blood; for them in death The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe A thousand men in troubles wide and dark: Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel, That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

But strength alone though of the Muses born Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn, Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchers Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs And thorns of life; forgetting the great end Of poesy, that it should be a friend To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.

And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, Where I may find the agonies, the strife Of human hearts.

Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me.

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone!