A WASTED ILLNESS

Through vaults of pain,

Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,

I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain

To dire distress.

And hammerings,

And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent

With webby waxing things and waning things

As on I went.

“Where lies the end

To this foul way?” I asked with weakening breath.

Thereon ahead I saw a door extend -

The door to death.

It loomed more clear:

“At last!” I cried. “The all-delivering door!”

And then, I knew not how, it grew less near

Than theretofore.

And back slid I

Along the galleries by which I came,

And tediously the day returned, and sky,

And life — the same.

And all was well:

Old circumstance resumed its former show,

And on my head the dews of comfort fell

As ere my woe.

I roam anew,

Scarce conscious of my late distress... And yet

Those backward steps through pain I cannot view

Without regret.

For that dire train

Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before,

And those grim aisles, must be traversed again

To reach that door.