Classic Poem

This house of flesh was never loved of me!
This frail white arrogance of sounding towers,
How it has held me through the ordained hours
That I must pass to whiter dignity.
When sleep came beckoning, how I leapt, for then
I knew the low, half-flights of hampered wing,
But now there comes a surer Beckoning,
I go, nor shall endure these rooms again.
I have been held too long by closed-in walls,
By masonry of muscle, blood and bone,
This quaking house of flesh that was my own —
High roof-tree of the heart, see, how it falls!
I go . . . but pause upon the threshold's rust
To shake from off my feet my own dead dust.