Of painful cogitation, lo! a voice

Hollow and hoarse, as from the mouldering tomb,

"Perish the day in which I saw the light!

The day when first my mother's nursing care

Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come

Into the number of the joyful months,

Let blackness stain it and the shades of death

Forever terrify it.

For it cut

Not off as an untimely birth my span,