Classic Poem

And then, made free, through darkness dense and awful
I must perpetually in torment roam,
Bereft of any heaven, hope or home,
Such is God's fiat, cruel and unlawful,
Without a goal,
For his eventless, sluggish life of scorn
I, in my feeble innocence, must mourn;
I, his sad, stricken soul!

But, did he do some deed sublime and glorious,
Were he to die in some wild, startling way,
Unlike the common herds of dross and clay,
Ah! then, elect, superb, transformed, victorious,
His praises I would sing!
But what all-subtle power, when I have none,
Will murmur in his ear, " This should be done, "
And fire to ashes bring?

Ah! I would give, to quell this daily torment,
My immortality, were it not too late.
Crushed by the hand of some invisible fate,
My power to urge him lies inert and dormant.
Calm as the sky,
He will live on, this rigid sphinx of men,
Until Death's hounds bark in his heart, and then
In calm ways he will die!

Oh! I would fawn in lowly ways before him,
Could he on fierce inquisitorial pyres,
A heretic, be burned in sulphurous fires,
And see the horrid heat-waves circle o'er him.
Then I could soar
Forth from his charred and crackling, quivering flesh,
And, resurrect, be beautiful and fresh.
Above the fagots' roar!

For some wild, bizarre death I crave and languish,
Ere his dull, unimportant days are spent!
Fierce joy 't would lend me, and unique content,
Could I but hear him in atrocious anguish,
As in my dreams,
Shriek madly unto God when courage failed,
A sickening mass of horror, steel-impaled,
Where haughty Stamboul gleams!

Is there no fate supreme and beatific,
Although I suffer in his every throe,
Which in some sea, when tempests moan their woe,
Could drag him downward in dismay terrific,
Full of mad murmurings,
When, as he struggled in a hell of foam,
I could leap from him and regain my home
With glad, white wings?

No! I am doomed, and yet, though hope is meager,
I fain would lure him where some famished beast
In the miasmal jungles of the east
Might loom before him truculent and eager!
Or with my hates
Lead his poor, timorous feet in utter dread
Among rank ferns and reeking grass to tread
Where some damp cobra waits!

Oh God, be merciful! The days pass faster!
Hope dies within me, and my wings are cold;
He whom I loathe is growing blind and old;
The dreaded time has come of my disaster;
Oh, God of might!
In pity strike him with thy lightning dire,
Although I perish in its livid fire
And be naught in the night!