Classic Poem

The ashen feelers of the frigid morrow
Were groping at my forehead pale with sorrow,
And colder than these walls that round me stand.

Sleep fled from me, and ciphers half and whole
In phalanx upon phalanx chased my soul;
I raised my head and, horribly unmanned,

I glared upon a curling, crooked thing
A griffin shape down by thee cowering,
That held thy loved heart in a cruel hand.

And gnawed at it with teeth most steep and hard,
Until the cock's crow sounded from the yard,
Then fled it — and the young day scaled the land.

I pressed my fevered head and wept, undone,
I knew that also this made us as one,
The torture that is low and like a brand,

Which eats up nights and days and all our life.