Orpheus

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