- The Despair
- Abraham Cowley
- Exported from Wikisource on 02/15/20
- Beneath this gloomy shade,
- By Nature only for my sorrows made,
- I'll spend this voyce in crys,
- In tears I'll waste these eyes
- By Love so vainly fed;
- So Lust of old the Deluge punished.
- Ah wretched youth! said I,
- "Ah, wretched youth!" twice did I sadly cry:
- "Ah, wretched youth!" the fields and floods reply.
- When thoughts of Love I entertain,
- I meet no words but "Never," and "In vain."
- "Never" alas that dreadful name
- Which fuels the infernal flame:
- "Never," My time to come must waste;
- "In vain," torments the present and the past.
- "In vain, in vain!" said I;
- "In vain, in vain!" twice did I sadly cry;
- "In vain, in vain!" the fields and floods reply.
- No more shall fields or floods do so;
- For I to shades more dark and silent go:
- All this world's noise appears to me
- A dull ill-acted comedy:
- No comfort to my wounded sight,
- In the suns busy and imperti'nent Light.
- Then down I laid my head;
- Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
- And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.
- "Ah, sottish Soul" said I,
- When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
- "Fool to resume her broken chain!
- "And row her galley here again!
- "Fool, to that body to return
- "Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
- "Once dead, how can it be,
- "Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
- "That thou should'st come to live it o're again in me?"
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