Thomas Hardy

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.