Myrtle and Myrrh/Written After Reading King Lear
WRITTEN AFTER READING KING LEAR
Long is his course, O master of our woes,
And joys, and tears, our passions and desires,
In nature's school—in hell-begotten fires;
Dread is the agony and fell the throes
Which with the Night and Storm he undergoes,
While Treason in his robes herself attires,
And Love beneath adultery's sheet expires,
And mocked Sincerity sincerer grows.
To vie with wailing winds and weeping clouds
And valleys shrieking in the fangs of storms,
This Human Hurricane thou didst create;
But just as soon as Death this horror shrouds,
I hear the distant cry of fiery forms,
Ay, and the creaking of hell's deepest gate.