“Lord, being dark,” I said, “I cannot bear The further touch of earth, the scented air; Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt Beneath my brother’s heel; there is a hurt In all the simple joys which to a child Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails To see; too great a cost this birth entails. I strangle in this yoke drawn tighter than The worth of bearing it, just to be man. I am not brave enough to pay the price In full; I lack the strength to sacrifice. I who have burned my hands upon a star, And climbed high hills at dawn to view the far Illimitable wonderments of earth, For whom all cups have dripped the wine of mirth, For whom the sea has strained her honeyed throat Till all the world was sea, and I a boat Unmoored, on what strange quest I willed to float; Who wore a many-colored coat of dreams, Thy gift, O Lord--I whom sun-dabbled streams Have washed, whose bare brown thighs have held the sun Incarcerate until his course was run, I who considered man a high-perfected Glass where loveliness could lie reflected, Now that I sway athwart Truth’s deep abyss, Denuding man for what he was and is, Shall breath and being so inveigle me That I can damn my dreams to hell, and be Content, each new-born day, anew to see The steaming crimson vintage of my youth Incarnadine the altar-slab of Truth? Or hast Thou, Lord, somewhere I cannot see, A lamb imprisoned in a bush for me? Not so? Then let me render one by one Thy gifts, while still they shine; some little sun Yet gilds these thighs; my coat, albeit worn, Still holds its colors fast; albeit torn, My heart will laugh a little yet, if I May win of Thee this grace, Lord: on this high And sacrificial hill ’twixt earth and sky, To dream still pure all that I loved, and die. There is no other way to keep secure My wild chimeras; grave-locked against the lure Of Truth, the small hard teeth of worms, yet less Envenomed than the mouth of Truth, will bless Them into dust and happy nothingness. Lord, Thou art God; and I, Lord, what am I But dust? With dust my place. Lord, let me die.” Across the earth’s warm, palpitating crust I flung my body in embrace; I thrust My mouth into the grass and sucked the dew, Then gave it back in tears my anguish drew; So hard I pressed against the ground, I felt The smallest sandgrain like a knife, and smelt The next year’s flowering; all this to speed My body’s dissolution, fain to feed The worms. And so I groaned, and spent my strength Until, all passion spent, I lay full length And quivered like a flayed and bleeding thing.