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Benson, Arthur Christopher - Self
Identifier
028290
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Self - Benson, Arthur Christopher (1862 - 1925)
Original Text: Arthur Christopher Benson, The Professor and Other Poems (London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1900): 7-8. PR 4099 B5P7 Robarts Library
This is my chiefest torment, that behind
The brave and subtle spirit, the swift brain,
There sits and shivers, in a cell of pain,
A groping atom, melancholy, blind,
Which is myself; -- though, when spring suns are kind,
And rich leaves riot in the genial rain,
I cheat him, dreaming: slip my rigorous chain,
Free as a skiff before the dancing wind.
Then he awakes: and vexed that I am glad,
In dreary malice strains some nimble cord,
Pricks his thin claw within some delicate nerve;
And all at once I falter, start, and swerve
From my true course, to fall, unmanned and sad,
Into gross darkness, tangible, abhorred.