Of all the women whom I know it is
Alcestis I most passionately admire,
Who died for an unworthy man, being
Sure that love was death
And nothing more. Nothing is pure in
Nature. Not childhood, nor infancy
Nor the moment of begetting with its
Too many images. Uneasy in my
Labor, uneasy in my rest. In love
Distressed; and in my loneliness quite lost—
I walk out in this storm, as in a mind
Deranged but not unclean;
Alcestis is my dream, who died forever
And then rose—for three days mute and strange.