BEHOLD me waiting—waiting for the knife. A little while, and at a leap I storm The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. The gods are good to me: I have no wife, No innocent child, to think of as I near The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear Unmans me for my bout of passive strife. Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready. But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady! V OPERATION YOU are carried in a basket, Like a carcase from the shambles, To the theatre, a cockpit Where they stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being. And you gasp and reel and shudder In a rushing, swaying rapture, While the voices at your elbow Fade—receding—fainter—farther. Lights about you shower and tumble, And your blood seems crystallising— Edged and vibrant, yet within you Racked and hurried back and forward. Then the lights grow fast and furious, And you hear a noise of waters, And you wrestle, blind and dizzy, In an agony of effort, Till a sudden lull accepts you, And you sound an utter darkness . . . And awaken . . . with a struggle . . . On a hushed, attentive audience. VI AFTER LIKE as a flamelet blanketed in smoke, So through the anæsthetic shows my life; So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife With the strong stupor that I heave and choke And sicken at, it is so foully sweet. Faces look strange from space—and disappear. Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear— And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet: All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly Time and the place glimpse on to me again; And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty, I wake—relapsing—somewhat faint and fain, To an immense, complacent dreamery. VII VIGIL LIVED on one’s back, In the long hours of repose, Life is a practical nightmare— Hideous asleep or awake. Shoulders and loins Ache - - - ! Ache, and the mattress, Run into boulders and hummocks, Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes— Tumbling, importunate, daft— Ramble and roll, and the gas, Screwed to its lowermost, An inevitable atom of light, Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper Snores me to hate and despair. All the old time Surges malignant before me; Old voices, old kisses, old songs Blossom derisive about me; While the new days Pass me in endless procession: A pageant of shadows Silently, leeringly wending On . . . and still on . . . still on!