 Could I no more aspire than these,
         Were all my wishes bound
 In family or social ease,
 In worldly, usual jollities
         Or children playing round,
 Happy were I but to have then
 The usual life of usual me
 But oh! I have within my heart
         Things that cannot keep still -
 A mystic and delirious smart
 That doth a restlessness impart,
         An ache, a woe, an ill;
 I wearied Sysyphus I groan
 Against the world's ironic ston
 I, the eternally excluded
         From socialness and mirth,
 The aching heart whose mind has brooded
 Till thought turned raving mad hath flooded
         The soul that gave it birth ­-
 I weep to know I have in me
 Aught at once joy and miser
 And cold before the normal, cold
         And fear‑struck I remain,
 As one old, formidably old,
 Who doth portentous secrets hold
         That he cannot explain
 But which the world's show doth suggest
 Unto his mind that knows not res
 How good after dinner to chat
         And sit in half a sleep,
 Without a duty‑sense to strike flat
 All ease, all cosiness to abate
         An aspiration deep;
 To have an ease no pains do throng
 Nor felt as an ease that is wron
 A home, a rest, a child, a wife ­-
         None of these are for me
 Who wish for aught beyond this life
 With an incessant inner strife
         That knows not victor
 Ay me! and none to comprehend
 This wish that doth all things transcen
 Some in some theatre are away
         Or other place of joy
 And keep, for ever glad and gay,
 The hounds of thought and care at bay
         That cannot laugh or toy:
 These are awaited in some homes,
 A faint light from their windows come
 A cosiness these homes must steep
         In something like a slumber,
 And in that surface‑living deep
 'Tis hard to know that hearts do kee
         
 Yet these are normal; I that sigh 
 And dread their living - what am I?