My Maker shunneth me: Even as a wretch stricken with leprosy, So hold I pestilent supremacy. Yea! He hath fled far as the uttermost star, Beyond the unperturbed fastnesses of night And dreams that bastioned are By fretted towers of sleep that scare His light. Of wisdom writ, whereto My burdened feet may haste withouten rue, I may not spell -- and I am sore to do. Yea, all (seeing my Maker hath such dread), Even mine own self-love, wists not but to fly To Him, and sore besped Leaves me, its captain, in such mutiny. Will, deemed incorporate With me, hath flown ere love, to expiate Its sinful stay where He did habitate. Ah me, if they had left a sepulchre; But no -- the light hath changed not, and in it Of its same colour stir Spirits I see not but phantasmed feel to flit. Air, legioned with such, stirreth, So that I seem to draw them with my breath, Ghouls that devour each joy they do to death, Strange glimmering griefs and sorrowing silences Bearing dead flowers unseen whose charnel smell Great awe to my sense is Even in the rose-time when all else is well. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ODE IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS FALLEN FOR FRANCE by ALAN SEEGER SINCERE FLATTERY OF R.B. by JAMES KENNETH STEPHEN TO A FRIEND by WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 3 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING SONGS IN ABSENCE: 8 by ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH LINES TO A COMIC AUTHOR, ON AN ABUSIVE REVIEW by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE |