Classic Poem

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.°
What hours, O what black hours we have spent°
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent°
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree°
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;°
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see°
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.