Poem for December 24, 2023

Love's Lunacy

Why do I speak of joy, or write of love,

When my heart is the very den of horror,

And in my soul the pains of Hell I prove,

With all his torments and infernal terror?

What should I say? What yet remains to do?

My brain is dry with weeping all too long,

My sighs be spent in uttering my woe,

And I want words wherewith to tell my wrong;

But, still distracted in Love's lunacy,

And, bedlam-like, thus raging in my grief,

Now rail upon her hair, then on her eye,

Now call her Goddess, then I call her thief,

Now I deny her, then I do confess her,

Now do I curse her, then again I bless her.