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Let me not lose my senses, God;
Better the pilgrim’s scrip and rod,
Or toil and hunger sad.
Not that I prize this mind of mine,
Or that my reason to resign
I should not be right glad,
If only then they’d set me free.
At large! How sportively I’d flee
To where the dark wood gleams!
I’d sing in raving ecstasies,
Forgetting self in fantasies
Of changeful wondrous dreams.
To the wild waves I’d lend an ear,
And glancing upward, full of cheer,
Would scan the open sky;
And strong and free I’d rush amain,
A whirlwind sweeping o’er the plain,
Crashing through woods I’d fly.
But there’s the rub! You lose your sense—
Are dreaded like a pestilence,
And clapped in prison drear.
They chain you to the idiot’s yoke,
And, through the cage-bars, to provoke
The wild beast they draw near.
No more the nightingale to hear
At midnight singing sweet and clear,
Nor greenwood’s rustling strains,
But only brother-madmen’s cries,
The nightly keeper’s blasphemies,
And shrieks, and clang of chains.