In hell’s own deepest pit, far, far below
Phlegethon’s flame and Styx’s stifling flow,
Far below Tartarus, below the land
Thrust lowest in the devilish vertigo.
If I could weep or slumber or forget!
If love once left me, with his eyelids wet
With tender memory of his own despair
Or frozen to a statue of regret!
If but the chilling agony, that turns
To bitter fever-heat that stings and burns
Would freeze me, or destroy me, or impair
My sense, that it should feel not how it yearns!
Or if this pain were only pain, and not
A deadness deeper than all pain, a spot
And central core of agony in me,
One heart-worm, one plague-leprosy, one blot
Of death, one anguish deeper than control ?—
Then were I fit to gain the Olympian goal
And fling forth fiery wailings to the sea,
And tune the sun’s ray to my smitten soul!
How should I sing who cannot even see?
Grope through a mist of changeless misery.
An age-long pain—no time in wretchedness ! —
As of an hammer annihilating me
115