Poems (Taggart)/Lines composed in great Suffering

by Cynthia Taggart

LINES COMPOSED IN GREAT SUFFERING. 1829.

Sad, moaning wind! thy mournful melody,
Joined with the murmurs of the troubled sea,
Falls on the ear disconsolate and lone,
Like pitying Mercy's sympathizing tone;—
Calms the wild throbbing of the rending breast,
Where ever rankling tortures are compressed,
And each chill tenant that inhabits there
Is grief's sad offspring, fostered by despair:—
Thy fitful gusts, thy faint and dying sounds,
Thy hoarse, loud roarings, and thy plaintive moans,
Calm the wrecked brain, where pangs contentious dwell,
All wildly striving, all triumphant still!
Congenial sounds, for each unuttered pain,
In thy wild, frantic murmurings complain,—
Reason, confusion, madness, and despair
Striving the palm of victory to bear!
Convulsions direful rend each fibrous thread,
Bearing keen tortures, and the aching head
Traverse with vigorous and appalling might,
With rage consuming and terrific fright,
Laboring unwearied, watchful, firm, and strong,—
Tenacious each of the aspiring throng
To gain the empire of the ruined brain,
Where Happiness once held her blest domain.
Thy mournful murmurs sympathize alone;
But the keen tortures every charm disown.
Thy wild commotion and aërial strife
Tell the strange tumult of a mortal life,—
When each sad night is marked with grief supreme,
And every vision, every soothing dream
Of rest and quiet, has for ever fled,
And prostrate hope lies blasted, cold, and dead,—
Each moment big with every grief and woe
That reigns in ceaseless anguish here below.