A Wasted Illness
Through vaults of pain,Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,I passed, and garish spectres moved my brainTo dire distress.
And hammerings,And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blentWith webby waxing things and waning thingsAs on I went.
“Where lies the endTo 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 nearThan theretofore.
And back slid IAlong 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 fellAs ere my woe.
I roam anew,Scarce conscious of my late distress . . . And yetThose backward steps through pain I cannot viewWithout regret.
For that dire trainOf waxing shapes and waning, passed before,And those grim aisles, must be traversed againTo reach that door.
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