A solid confrontation!
A definite foe!
But I am haunted by naught more than shadows.
Phantom illusions,
Through slights and offences;
That wound me thusly,
To my core.
While granting not cause
For this revenge
My soul most lustily calls.
Hark! the hunters' trumpets sound.
The clangor of the smith
Striking upon the hot iron
Heated to its blazing glow by the wrath of contention.
The hounds bay for the chase,
But to what end?
No definite adversary do mine eyes behold.
No crafty serpent nor wily counselor
On whose ill-appointed head to heap the blame.
No one mutinous voice stands out
Among the throng
Calling for my execution.
I seek, but no adversary do I find
With which to blame
The adversity
Of my ever-clamoring mind.
And thus, my duly-seeded rage doth rage,
And rage again!
Amidst the tangled windings of my crowded mind.
And doth throw itself, screaming!
Against the confines of its ill-approportioned prison,
Seeking a victim for its violent protest
Against the wrongs it doth rightly perceive
Be done against me.
Guile and treachery, these I did once call my truest friends
That now despise, and use
Their confidential knowledge to my hurt,
Saying seeming praise to others' ears,
But which in word is fatal poison to my maligned love.
Thusly, I seek revenge on them that use me shamefully,
But finding them well-thought
In this shallow, faceless world,
My rage, finding no favored object whereon to spend itself,
Doth turn in firey anguish
Like a tortured Phoenix,
Conspiring self-immolation,
Nevermore to rise again,
Doth destroy itself, and me.
Thus my squandered rage doth find:
Me;
And thou, my friend,
My epilogue dost read.