Explore "A Wasted Illness" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THROUGH vaults of pain, / Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness, / I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain / To dire distress.
And hammerings, / And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent / With webby waxing things and waning things / As on I went.
"Where lies the end / To this foul way? " I asked with weakening breath. / Thereon ahead I saw a door extend- / The door to death.
It loomed more clear: / "At last! " I cried. "The all-delivering door! " / And then, I knew not how, it grew less near / Than theretofore.
And back slid I / Along the galleries by which I came, / And tediously the day returned, and sky, / And life-the same.
And all was well: / Old circumstance resumed its former show, / And on my head the dews of comfort fell / As ere my woe.
I roam anew, / Scarce conscious of my late distress... And yet / Those backward steps through pain I cannot view / Without regret.
For that dire train / Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before, / And those grim aisles, must be traversed again / To reach that door.