Through vaults of pain,

Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,

I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain

      To dire distress.

      And hammerings,

And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent

With webby waxing things and waning things

      As on I went.

      “Where lies the end

To this foul way?” I asked with weakening breath.

Thereon ahead I saw a door extend—

      The door to death.

      It loomed more clear:

“At last!” I cried.  “The all-delivering door!”

And then, I knew not how, it grew less near

      Than theretofore.

      And back slid I

Along the galleries by which I came,

And tediously the day returned, and sky,

      And life—the same.

      And all was well:

Old circumstance resumed its former show,

And on my head the dews of comfort fell

      As ere my woe.

      I roam anew,

Scarce conscious of my late distress . . .  And yet

Those backward steps through pain I cannot view

      Without regret.

      For that dire train

Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before,

And those grim aisles, must be traversed again

      To reach that door.