Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Despair

I have experienc'd
The worst, the World can wreak on me--the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd Discontents the dying prayer--
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My Heart had any interest in this Life,
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That Hostage, which the world had in it's keeping
Given by me as a Pledge that I would live--
That Hope of Her, say rather, that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the Tyranny of Life--is gone ah ! whither?
What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this League of Blood
That ties me to myself--and break I shall! 

1. Home-Sick. Written In Germany
2. Duty Surviving Self-Love, the Only Sure Friend of Declining Life
3. To the Autumnal Moon
4. To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation That Women Have No Souls
5. What Is an Epigram?

Anne Sexton Despair ("Who is he?")

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