[BNP/E3, 78 – 66]

Agony.

_______

Never have I so deeply felt my exclusion from mankind.

To one side the sane, to the other side the lame and the halt and the blind;

To one side the healthy, the good, the strong, those in life's prime,

To the other side the slaves of genius, of madness, of crime.

Build prisons and hospitals and Bedlams. To one side the glad,

To the other side the sickly, the stupid, the ill and the mad.

At no time have I felt so deep the gulf between me and men.

Is it idiocy, madness or crime, or genius - or what is this pain?

I have felt it to-day with full truth and have felt to remember it well:

I am one thrown aside ‑ a torturer and tortured in my being's hell;

Yet I asked not to live, nor had choice of my living's rotten worth,

I had no power on my life, nor am I guilty of my birth.

So I shall sing my song without hope, cheerless and forlorn,

That men may learn - at least they may laugh - to what some hearts are born;

Song all mystery, all symbols, contradictions in ignoble dance,

But that this is madness complete not the smallest ignorance;

Song all of tortures of soul, of a being's human abysm

And never a doubt but this is but raving egotism;

Song of evil, song of hate, song of revolt, song of love

Of Nature, of Mother Nature, the earth at my feet and the sky above;

Song of the hatred of customs, of creeds, of conventions, of institutions

[67^r]

____2.

Song of madness unpondering to human prostitutions;

Song of one that better were dead, song of one set aside,

Song of one that hell and earth conspired and combined to deride.

Peace! let the sane be set on that side and the ill[1] on this side.

Alexander Search.

October 16^th 1907.

[1] ill ^/mad\