A Wasted Illness

Through vaults of pain,     Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,     I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain      To dire distress.      And hammerings,     And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent     With webby waxing things and waning things      As on I went.      "Where lies the end     To this foul way?" I asked with weakening breath.     Thereon ahead I saw a door extend -      The door to death.      It loomed more clear:     "At last!" I cried. "The all-delivering door!"     And then, I knew not how, it grew less near      Than theretofore.      And back slid I     Along the galleries by which I came,     And tediously the day returned, and sky,      And life - the same.      And all was well:     Old circumstance resumed its former show,     And on my head the dews of comfort fell      As ere my woe.      I roam anew,     Scarce conscious of my late distress . . . And yet     Those backward steps through pain I cannot view      Without regret.      For that dire train     Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before,     And those grim aisles, must be traversed again      To reach that door.