The hour is come for promises' fulfilment
This physic but prolongs thy sickly bat
Tormenting still poor Lillian's brain. My love,
In midnight's sweet obscurity I'll go
Through Axe's shed to Hacksaw's bleating sett,
That sundry nothings may be haply gleaned
From stubborn fields.

                           (drowsing) Oh, ... oh ... oh.
My counterpane – my ombudsman – Macaw.
Belike the burthen of some oaken sage,
Alas! A premonition.

                           See, she stirs,
As now the coming of the witching hour
Burns gnats quite softly in the glowing grate
A panacea, a blanket for the soul.
And now to put out the light, that darkness hide
Her sweet embalmèd fragrance, that her days'
Undoing be not scanned. Goodnight, my love.

Aye, 'tis done, for better or for worse
To lay to rest the anger of my verse.

How, Lillian lacking, should tomorrow night
Be sweeter than the this? And how shall I
Wrap up the kingly care, in loamly toil,
As if to expurgate our former selves
From these our blackened pages on the roll
Of mortal span; what unexpungèd woes
Trefoliate behove his regal stealth?
This night shall carry with it many deeds.
See! My hands are bloodied yet by hers,
Which now shall play no more about my pate.
Who steals my love steals trash, and I it him.

This darkling solitude were less than well
Nay! It evil were! O, had I not
Without at least a moment's hesitation
All my goods within this charabanc
Consigned, as doth the shepherd send his sheep
Away, when balance finds them wanting; sick,
But palsied; whole, but hearty, hale and live
Their greater powers should thrive apace, and so
Should ever mine, their several selves

                                      Hello!

These silences of night are such that men
Nay find betimes unsilenced in the mind
Their hallowed selves. A windless sea, typhooned
By rackless mariners of weed, is calm
Their roasted decks with melted pitch. And I
Should even as the filthy sea-mew wend
'Twixt pole and 'quater's mass. Aye, compass-mad
And crazed by cause of windlasses and masts
My binnacle abused by all that sing.
O, that now a candle cooked my egg
In addled both-end burning: as to wick
The numbness of the cat expires apace
And soon his very tail shall come alive,
As beetle hatched from horny coffin-womb
To sate his thirst upon some hibern stew
Placed next his husk by kindly human gods,
Their fest'ring remnants to abuse. Withal
In lively frollicking he'll ease my lot
An absent brother; now my bus awaits
To take me far away, to cloistered shores
Where I shall dig a sandy grave.

                                      Lillian!

Lillian: art thou really gone? Thou too
Absorbed by blanket dry, thy luscious blood
Sucked up by moon's terrestrial tongue ... and gone?
Love, like an ailing worm, now coils about
My slow neck. O Lillian, I shall die
Whom am a mouse; thy body, quaint and stiff
Shall fester where it even now doth lie
And I by it as it by me and you
My whole repose; come, quinkly-varnished night
And ease my failing limbs. Uncloud me quite
With nimbus, cirrus, mare's-tail, calculus
And barb'rous formalism; may the sun
Burn out my pancreas. O Lillian!
My lily: now into what aery fields
My spirit stray, thy love shall be the path
And this sweet sword be now in death my solace
Slooped, but never damped. And thus I end.