HESITANT LITTLE ADULT BOY WANTS TO LIVE

In thine eyes thou unhappy little orphan's suicidal lust still dwells; thou hast burned in thyself from long ago insatiable, thy grumbling is not forgiven by human compassion, nor by pitying kindness! Thy timid mist and gloom have not yet torn off thy mask, that they may truly know thee by more intimate loyalties.

Thou canst no longer endure many a day's calvary-haunting; nails are driven into thy childish conscience by others who thought thou prodigal. Thou art a bewildered hermit-sacred, who, as it were, is a grief-stricken fakir within himself: in tearful well-deep waves would, if he could, drown his pains in tamed holy sobs. There is just enough of you to scream your mélange of hysteria into the world's indifferent face like a bull in a Jericho rage - but only if there is someone left with you to lean on after your self-examining cry!

For, even if you don't believe it now: someone may redeem you in a salutary smile-flame! And you would have claimed him for yourself. Thou wast the last of the last in a bustle of the last, - but yet thou existedst! And whithersoever thy fate's merciless, gallant hand may pull, bend, and thrust thee, Thou hast tried all, though thy bones were broken to splinters by Fate, or envious freeloaders stood guard over thy head!

For hard are the wandering times now! There's no rival to the raging monkeys and the fist-fighting monkeys. And even more brainless seem the idiotic, foolish, foolish follies Literature is the only refuge. Letters to be sworn, sacred oaths To cling to in the thundering heat of the ages!