[BNP/E3, 79 – 6]

‘Tis fit that you should know {…}

The {…} voice that unto you doth speak

And on your history winds strange thoughts and mad doth wreak.

_______

I am a cynic with a broken heart

I am a sceptic who would fain believe

I would be good true, just, but there’s a part

Of me that hates me and that makes me grieve

I hate the life I will myself to live

[6a^r]

And wish the future of my dying day

The time when worms upon my frame

The {…} shall weave

The characters of rot {…}

{…} always

[6^v]

I sprung to love from childhood’s innocence

Knowing not yet, because I was a boy,

Nature’s perpetual rot, vile and immense,

Which mocks love’s kisses with the bite of joy,

I was not one whose living cannot cloy.