THE mocking fiends by day
Make frenzied play
Around my loneliness;
The haunting sprites delight
To sport at night,
And jeer at my soul’s wretchedness;
Imprisoned in the boundary of a mind
Holding but one thought; only one can find
The thought of you!
You, far away,
In silence wrapped.
With all Hell’s crew
About me gay,
And I in loneliness am trapped.
Not God nor Devil ease
The torture of a lonely soul,
For haunting thoughts will cling,
And naught relief can bring—
No recreation please.
Grim misery must take its toll
Of tears and pain—
And work is vain!
The vanquished mind in scorn
His work, and damns it be forlorn,
And with it all creative work
Henceforward be reviled.
Work? Where? Not here! Within these walls?
Work! What? Come, try it now,
And answer every thought that calls
In every moment. Tell me how
One single minute, pray,
My mind can get away
From her, the absent one—
Come, tell me, and my work is done.
The air! Go out and roam the field.
Sit in the sun—or rain;
Or count the stars again;
Or tell the steps long footsore journeys have revealed.
Do something. Go! But what?
What, leave that thought behind?
Where go? Where that is not
The burden of my mind?
Forget. Why, all the fiends of midnight hours
Yell that drab word at me; it falls in showers
Of rattling drops,
And never stops,
Until my ears
And I accurst
With all Hell’s fears!
Still there are moments when
Relief comes to my ken,
Then I admire my torturer sublime.
The silence of her absence is like time
A million years beyond this day—
Like stillness of forgotten tombs,
Where Nineveh, once gay,
Stood mighty, where now the sandstorm booms
O’er a desert quite as lonely as my heart.
She leaves me, like a queen, to bear the smart
Of her superb indifference and calm—
Unconscious of the harm
Such loneliness can do!
The day when it is new
Dawns dark and drear.
Each hour a bier
On which I lay my thought,
And see it come to life again—
Reincarnated spirit, caught
Back, to murder it in agony, and then—
The weary strife goes on and on,
The minutes reek with blood,
And then the fiends of loneliness soon don
The inky cloak with scarlet hood,
And round me chant their racking dirges chill,
And bring their terrors on to slay my will.
First, slimy, drooling Jealousy appears—
A female draped in timid lover’s fears—
She minces, ambles, leers at me,
And whispers tales, maliciously.
The spume of Hell’s presumption she,
The horror of the lonely. See!
How she begins her work—
The craft! the skill!
It enters like a dirk—
The soul to kill.
She fails, and vanishes in mist.
My soul is adamant, and will resist.
Then Poison comes, in silvery sheen,
The figure holds a cup between
The palms of outstretched hands,
And in a pleasant tone commands me, “Drink!
And no more think.
Why suffer earth’s delirious pain?
The yearning heart that yearns in vain
Will know no peace until the light
Goes out in never-ending night.
I bring you here the only balm
For loneliness. Drink, and be calm!
Where all is still no aching mind
Can harrow you—peace you will find.”
Then Poison hies away;
To tempt me when despair
May crush me some dread day,
And I no longer care!
They fail to find me apt,
So on comes License garbed
In golden lace, and wrapped
About her waist a serpent barbed.
Hell’s finest figure walks
With dignity and grace;
Beseechingly she talks,
And modest is her face.
The fiends do well. They know
The jade
Must masquerade,
Seem innocence, aglow,
My loneliness to break and then beguile!
The trick is hardly worth a smile.
Still I am left alone
To wrestle with the spawn
That comes from Hell to fawn
On me. Can soul atone
For this one cruel act of thine,
My torturer, divine?
Can thoughts so merciless afflict
The mind and leave it sane?
Or bubbles burst, when they are pricked,
And seem the same again?
The weariness of longing and its woe,
The evil thoughts drear loneliness will sow,
The torrid tears,
Abhorrent fears,
The fretful waiting,
The frenzied hating;
All come to me, by night, by day,
When you are far away.
. . . . .
Tired mind is easy prey
For hideous imagination’s play.