Laocoon
- This spirit-choking atmosphere
- With deadly serpent-coil
- Entwines my soaring-upwardness
- And chains me to the soil,
- Where’er I seek with eager stride
- To gain yon gleaming height,
- These noisesome fetters coil aloft
And snare my buoyant flight.
- O, why these aspirations bold,
- These rigours of desire.
- That surge within so ceaselessly
- Like living tongues of fire?
- And why these glowing forms of hope
- That scintillate and shine,
- If naught of all that burnished dream
- Can evermore be mine?
- It cannot be, fate does not mock,
- And man’s untoward decree
- Shall not forever thus confine
- My life’s entirety,
- My every fibre fierce rebels
- Against this servile role,
- And all my being broods to break
- This death-grip from my soul!