Stings all my quivering body to keen life
And whips the blood into my straining limbs;
And all the youth within me springs to fire;
I am consumed with ravening desire
For one brief, wild, delirious hour of strife;
I yearn for every joy that flies or swims,
Rides on the wind or with the water flows.
Yet I must die by patient, slow degrees,
With hourly wasting flesh and parching blood;
Ah God, that I might leap into the flood,