[BNP/E3, 78B – 8-12]
__________
A Winter Day.
___
I.
'Tis a parched[1] winter day, sad as a moan.
A sense of loneliness, as of a stone
Upon a grave, or of a rock in sea
Rests like a mighty shadow over me.
I am unnerved, unminded by the pall
Of solemn clouds that, weighty over all,
Curtail the vision; and upon mine ear
The City's rumble brings despair and fear
To crush my spirit free and wild.
The rain,
Reiterated horribly, again
Beast with its drops at my cold window‑pane
With such a sound as makes us know it cold.
The world is ghostly, undaylike and old,
And weary passengers, with cautious tread,
Yet hurried, walk within the streets soul‑dead
In the unkindness of their hue of lead.
The streets are streamlets, and perpetual
A sound of little waters, on roof, on wall,
Down in the streets, in pipes, in window‑glass
And into rooms doth wetly come and pass.
[9r]
W.D. – 2.
All is the rain's.
All is pale wetness, darkness inly cold,
A sentiment of waste things and of old
Making all things exterior sorrows, pains;
And all we hear and feel and know and see
Is wrapt around as with a masking cloak
In |inconceivable| monotony.
All in the houses and up from the street
Is a long watery shuffle of heavy feet,
A sound of drenchèd garments, and a sense
Of a sad chillness, latently intense.
Through cracks in doors and windows a gust cold
Of wind penetrates like a memory of old
{…} to make to freeze my body, ill reclined
Upon a couch, a sufferer with my mind.
Life in the streets is sad, a monotone
More dull than usual ordinariness:
|Business| and work have lost their usual stress,
The venders’ cries are each of them a moan
Grotesque, desolate, as forlorn and half‑dead
Hearts might produce which make a worn attempt
At talking normally, as if they not bled.
[10r]
W.D. – 3.
Half‑childish urchins, gloriously unkempt
Laugh at the water that cart‑wheels upshed.
The muddy urchins in the streets that play
Make shades of envy in my soul to stay.
Couples, some newly‑married, others not,
Who in the commonness of their no‑thought
Have a deep happiness I would not have,
A joy to which I would prefer the grave,
Pass in the street, some gay and some sedate.
I feel me not like men in any way.
I envy those - I speak true - without hate
And without admiration, isolate.
I would that I were happy as they are
But not with that their happiness. Thus far
Such living as theirs is were unto me
Misery, penury, monotony.
Alas for all who dream! Alas for us,
Poor poets, more or less mad, more or less
Foolish! In this consists true happiness:
In knowing how to be monotonous.
Happy are they who can see without sorrow
To‑day yield us to‑morrow
And yet to‑morrow and to‑day to them
Different days because different days,
Which are to me (save that they pass) the same.
[11r]
W.D. – 4.
- II -
The view I have of this cold winter day,
The deep depression that makes my thoughts stray
Is but a symbol and a synthesis
Of what my life perpetually is.
How deep my thoughts in pain and sadness are!
How wreck'd my soul in its intense despair!
How desolate, disconsolately mute
My heart is of the words that like scents shoot
From the full flowër of true youthfulness!
How locked am I within my own distress!
How in the tragic circle soul‑confined
Of my abhorred self!
Not one ambition leads me - power nor pelf,
No wish for fame, no love of poor mankind.
But I am weary, desolate and cold
E'vn as this winter day. I have grown old
In watching dreams go by and pass away
Leaving a memory pure and bright
Of aught that was and died as light
Without the living horror of decay.
The all-possessing rain, dark natural thing,
A personal war on me seems now to wage;
Knowing how my soul doth to terror cling
When Nature darkens, with that terror mute
Of death, of world-obstruction absolute
The rain and wind and darkness one depress.
Look, how again the pale dim windows quiver
With a blank gust of rain that darkly hits
Upon them, while my inner soul doth shiver.
With alternating violence, in fits
Of elemental melancholic rage
Fearing to love its prey my misery
Upon itself and while the rain’s sound incompletely dies[2]
Upon my inattention, miserably
The rain I hear and ponder on my pains
With unreluctant agony that strains
To make itself more sad than it can be –
_______
prose
Then I withdraw into an inner room
And in that room truer and sincerer gloom
I light a candle whose {…} light doth bless
My fallen soul with its yellow[3] caress
The street’s {…} sound’s more dim do come
And wilder part of the anguish that took me
Sums in that deep seclusion to grow less.
A terror wild, confusing, that must take
To |suicide| if long-endurèd, sudden
Starts in me, terrible to {…} and madden
So with a hand that palely doth shake
The wild love, sullen mockery of day.
I shut mine eyes and cower, but upon
The window in its varying monotone
The rain beats, Desolation’s dread caress,
The dark insatiate Song of Loneliness.
[12r]
W.D. – 5.
Is this thy life, irresolute soul of mine?
How pale the sun of thy sad morn doth shine!
How it forebodes the cloudiness that comes
Outstretched wings of the storm whose muffled drums
Of warning in the paling day are heard
Deep in the distance lesseningly blurred.
Thou look’st not death nor evil in the face
Poor soul despairing in life’s troubled race!
All forms of life, all things have been to thee
Mutations of eternal misery.
All years[4], all homes to thee have ever been
In the same drama many a change of scene.
Thou hast not learned to live, but thou dost cling
Madly to life (dreading Death’s night severe[5]),
As if life or the world were anything!
As if, inevitable as they are {…}
Life, living, feeling were not to be taken
As all inevitable things in their
Heart {…}
Of smiley thought and {…} to be forsaken {…}
[1] parched /void\
[2] while the rain’s sound incompletely dies /now turns its wild, harsh eyes\
[3] yellow /rude\
[4] years /times\
[5] night severe /face unseen\/other mien different\
