Horae Nauseae

Love is not blind, but I alone, who steer

My wishes headlong unto death:

Love is no child, but I; who in a breath

Laugh and lament, and hope and fear:

What folly then to speak of “flames of Love!”

Love’s fire from untamed passion springs,

High and presumptuous thoughts are Cupid’s wings,

Or hopes as vain on which he soars above.

Love has no chains, Love bears no bow

To take, or strike the sound, and free:

No power has he save that which we bestow;

A poet’s fiction gave him birth,

The dream of fools, adored on earth

By none except the sons of vanity.

No more shall custom dash my coward heart,

Nor shadowy forms nor gloomy fears o’erpower

My soul, that waits the cold, dark, final hour:

Soul! be thyself, arm, courage is thy part.

If Death, though clad in sorrow’s sable weeds,

Bring peace, a stranger to my troubled breast,

I’ll give him welcome so he give me rest,

And thank him as his brandish’d dart he speeds.

Forgive me that I harbour’d childish fears

Of thee, the struggling soul who comest to aid,

As now the disentangled mesh it clears,

Mortality’s frail snare: no more afraid

I welcome thee with smiles, not greet with tears,

For well I know my Ransom hath been paid.

I saw, its lofty ramparts undermined,

Crumbling to earth, my native town decay;

I saw my fathers’ house, nor saw resign’d,

Alike assail’d Time’s not disdained prey:

Upon its black and Time-dishonour’d wall

My sword ancestral eager I survey’d;

Devouring Time, triumphant over all,

Had eaten into its corroded blade:

My shorten’d staff still yielded as I prest

The prop on which my age must yet rely,

And all on which my hand or eye could rest

Gave sad and solemn warning that we die.