THE WOMAN IN BLACK

I

My tale is simple, sad and brief -

As simple as all tales of grief,

As brief as all that is ours, though

It seem eternal to its woe;

No tale of glorious deeds or fair,

But one short poem of despair;

Dark as all things where man is caught

In the fine‑poisoned nets of thought.

Here is no flame of love's old fire,

Nor song of pent or free desire,

No thousand herses [?] fill its plan,

But it is centred round one man.

A man? A boy, if boyhood be

That where is sober misery.

About a boy all moves, an elf

Careless of happiness or pelf,

But fated to sing but himself.

I was not born to joy nor love.

The earth below, the sky above

Compel a sense within my soul

That deeply, heavily doth roll,

Like a tremendous, mystic sea

In lands where dreams alone can be;

A feeling that a sadness is,

Weeping in broken‑hearted bliss;

A sense that is a deep despair -

I know not why I should feel this

Before the things that are most fair.

Beauty is more than pleasure's joy:

That which must please is made to cloy,

And Nature cloys not with distaste

But gives a sorrow [?], as of past

Things whence the Present does inherit

Something where [...] is and deep

Beauty delicious in a sleep

That is half‑sadness to the spirit.

For Pleasure is not Joy - we know

Joy lives as sorrow in the heart;

One or the other lives; the dart

That Sorrow kills comes from Joy's bow.

Pleasure and distaste are not so.

Sorrow and Joy are as the strange

And unknown forms of life and change

That are ignored in depths of ocean:

Pure is the depth of their emotion.

Pleasure and Pain are not like these,

But as on surfaces of seas

The alternation of their motion

And shows of shifting without end.

Joy may like the sun's light transcend

The clouds of Pain; Pleasure may be

The face and look of Misery.

III

Ay, Nature chills me with deep fear,

For Nature, to my seeing, spent

With looking on my woes too near,

It is but Mystery eloquent.

The plainest stone, the simplest flower -

All have a meaning deep and vast,

Mocking their living of an hour.

But this significance, that hath past

So oft to poet’s song and word,

Makes them but madmen, even as I,

Speaking in outline [?] sense absurd

Strange thoughts for beings that must die.

But Man to me is dreader still,

The thing of thought, feeling and will,

Which is so dark unto mine eyes

That of the sense he calls his soul

- Let not of seeing speak the mole [?] -

I cannot dream to theorize.

For men, who have wrought creeds and codes

And guided nations by the roads

Of feeling and of speculation,

Have seen as much - nothing - as I

Into the world. All could perceive

That Nature aught doth signify:

Beyond this they could stop or rave.

Most raved and therefore could believe.

Yet I, naturally wrapt about,

Normally, as in feathers the bird,

With hesitation and with doubt,

Find all the world a thing absurd.

Because myself, a part of it,

Am an absurdity unfit.

Too young I learnt to reason coldly

And draw conclusions firmly, boldly,

From thoughts and facts to shatter creeds,

Careless of man's mendacious needs.

Preciseness cast in me the seeds

Of madness, and the soil was good

For that abnormal growth of pain

Whose flowers are red, colour of blood.

Too soon I learned to see too clear,

And therefore nothing now can capture

My heart, to which reasoning is rapture,

That sees night where most poets say

«'Tis day - I see it all - ­'tis day.ª

They sing of joy, T sing of fear.

Alas! Why should I stop thus long

Over the illness of my life,

That has Insanity for wife?

Turn I back with an impulse strong.

Leave I this shallowness and sing.

The deeper sorrow of my song.