How now my heart! At this most fell cross-road
The night far darker than a pit surrounds,
And only by the lightning's fitful stroke
Can'st see the perils that beset thy course;
Too clear they loom on searing eyeballs flashed;
Certain thy fate whatever twist or turn;
Deep tolls a bell beneath the tempest's roar,
And soon thy long-drawn struggle will be done.
Thou art too steeped in artifice, old heart!
So cunning that thou hardly art discerned:
In caverns never touched by light of day
Thou stirrest unbeknown;
At first as lusty
As any pliant sapling in the spring,
Soon as the lonely bull's dark hide
Art hard and bitter; weathered by the storms;
Cross-grained, bewildered, thy courage slowly failing;
Thou standest here: forlorn, dismayed, alone.
Thy years have passed away in that Great Search,
The quest that bruises hearts on hardest stone;
Seeking a refuge from dread loneliness,
Some haven where the soul is not bereaved;
Too often—my heart—hast thou been sorely bruised;
And now at last the truth confronts thy gaze,
Declared by flash against the pitiless night:
'The soul must die as it hath lived—alone.'
Alone! The shuddering echo dies away;
No subterfuge, no shelter is there ever,
There is no anodyne for weary hearts;
For him who stands alone at this cross-road
The only hope is death.
From nothingness to nothingness thou passest!
As thou wert born—
As thou hast lived, so shalt thou die!
Death is the only refuge: at his visage
All other spectres flee. Remorse that teareth
Like the undying worm, and Failure,
That sheeted gibberer, his brother,
Who like two hounds have haunted thy abode,
Must vanish at his touch:
And soon, thy journey done, thy trouble over,
Wrapped in the mantle of forgetfulness
Thou shalt sleep well.