Ill, by my cottage, pacing to and fro,
Unstrung and haunted, the wreckage of my years
Wrestling with horrible obsessions, fears
And melancholias — thus he found me; so
He thus began: " Poseur and coward, know
I'm the true friend to make a man of you;
You would be thought a genius, being blue,
And crave for coddling. " — " O for God's sake, O " ...
I shrieked. . . . " Come, come, sir, look me in the eye "
(Magniloquently pounding with his cane);
" Each friend of yours now thinks the same as I "
(This, as it proved, was O the cruel lie!) ...
I gripped his arm, in agony of pain —
In agony as one about to die.

" Remember what I've suffered — the dead wife,
The slander " — " Well, that's months ago, old top "
(His very words). " Buffoon, blasphemer, stop!
Stop, stop! Or it will cost you yet your life. "
Then, in collapse, I stumbled up the path,
He after me (still aiming to restore);
My white-haired father helped me through the door,
His gentle eyes aflame with solemn wrath,
That cowed him into flight. . . . The harm was done ...
The neighbors came ... the bed prepared ... the shade
Drawn to the sill ... to take once more the sun
Away from me ... afraid ... afraid ... afraid ...
In horror of the very pillow where
I burrowed in despair ... despair ... despair.

I waive the months thereafter. Take a hint,
All people: If some roving yokel ran
Across a cripple binding to a splint
(Some roadside makeshift, cornstalk or rattan)
His shattered leg-bone, and thereby began
To tear it off by pounding with a flint,
And wrapped the wound in thistle-leaves for lint,
Were he indeed the good Samaritan?
Would we not hale him into court, insane
Or brute? But monstrously at large there plod,
Assuming a licence from all-seeing God,
The yokels, lighting on the crippled brain, —
Or, since these fiercer wounds don't bleed with blood,
Think you they're not tenfold the wounds of pain?