My face with burrs,—than, walking towards the waves,

To feel earth slip away; the architraves

Of darkness plunge me downward to some pit

Of wallow and of water.—Madder knaves

Than I have stood thus in a fever-fit

Of heart and brain and shuddered from the brink of it.

V

Wooingly silence whispered to me there

Through boughs of dripping darkness sad with rain;

Darkness, that met my eyeballs everywhere,