Volunteer prisoner
The night surprises me more and more strangely. I'll be a dark-faced shadow-rab, Tightened in moon-yellow shackles, If a dog's bark wakes me or surprises me. My house has long since been surrounded and guarded by knife-tooths flashing sharply from moon-craters, and like a shining cop drawn on relieuxes - the moon paints the walls of my room with panther-patterned stripes.
Striped, guilty, condemned, the objects and furniture have become like those registered by a bargained System; my pyjamas, like the striped prison uniform of a saffander. Now I lie in the summer night - vigil among men with a stranger - like the innocent convict between friendly bars.
For I have deliberately chosen my captivity, which now protects rather than sunsets me. I dabble not in bohemian irresponsibility in the blindly happy dark. My prison has become my redeeming companion, while my solitude, where I may set right the world's outcast happenings. And my prison is also the unrelenting Morality, which, with stubborn stubbornness, compels me still to the Nobler and the Better!
It whispers to me evermore, "Thou shalt not give thyself prodigally!"- And now it would be well to have some blessed, redeeming holy-daughter: in my left arm with my immortal Beloved, and in my right with the budding angel of our fruit-bearing love. Whom as everlasting dear companions he will take Into man's vulnerable heart! - Outside, the wild bawd's Jericho cry Of wild bawds' wild revels is thundering and thundering, And at least a million voices from the cedar Bombard the cedar.
On the forest's bare edge, where the ineffable Peace would still be unfurling its broken wings of birds, there is a lonely, deadly rock: among its statues, the little Schubert-brushes, loud and merry, fall and fall, and like a bonfire of flaming hearts, the romantic serenades live and pulsate. My heart, in supplication to some one, is melancholy singing the melodies of lark-bells, - and then can I be the happiest, if I can still see the superstitious earthly moth of my prisoner!