“I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life”:
On the edge of dissipation,
Mind and body torn and bruised,
He wrote, and feared:
“Steam in all its applications,
Light getting under harness as a slave for man,
Powers from heaven descending upon education
And accelerations of the press,
Powers from hell (as it might seem, but there also celestial)
coming round upon artillery and the forces of destruction,—
The eye of the calmest observer is troubled;
The brain is haunted as if by some ghostly beings moving among us…
Left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil;
for some minds to lunacy, for others a reagency of fleshly torpor.”
In the undead darkness, sneaking rats’ meals,
He exhaled from the deep:
“Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain!”
Afraid, torn, relieved, and torn anew,
But always—always—trying, really trying,
He is summoned away in dark dreams:
“Candles at four o’clock,
Warm hearth-rugs,
Tea,
A fair tea-maker,
Shutters closed,
Curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor,
Whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without”.
Courteous reader:
Paint me, then, a world of candles and rugs and tea and curtains,
But one of deep dreams and deeper wakefulness,
Where we need not hide from the storm.
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