Medium
Identificação
[BNP/E3, 77 – 76-77]
Agony
Beginning.
X Darkness and storm outside make inward gloom,
X Quiet and home within and useless pain
Weigh down upon me as a wasted life,
X Save where from the vile[1] tomb
X Of day there comes a semblance of a strife
Through the blown varying of the pallid rain.
__________
X (The mansion’s form on thunder-hustings shake)
X A blankly‑smiling day informs our eyne,[2]
X And there is here a ghastness and a gale
That make |the[3] frail form| quake;
And strange to me who think all things must quail,
A voice is raised in joy - alas! not mine.
Why cannot youth be joyous, full of love?
Why am I made the corpse that woes and fears
And problems grim and world‑enigmas dire
Should like a body wove
|Close to my nature, in which is a fire
The feverous source of lying pains and tears?|
[77r]
Beginning – 2.
X Blow hard, thou wind; look pale, thou awful day!
Ye cannot in your dread and horror match
The thing that I bear in me and is me,
These idle thoughts that stray
Subordinate to the deep agony
Of him who hears the gate of reason's latch
Fall with a sound of termination,
As of a thing locked past and for e'er done.
Alexander Search.
March 1905.
[1] vile /pale\
[2] X (The mansion’s form on thunder-hustings shake) /Before the thunder shall the mansion shake\
X A blankly‑smiling day informs our /the\ /my\ eyne,
[3] the /my\