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Laurella and other poems

by John Todhunter

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THE BOTTOMLESS PIT.
  
  
  
  
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196

THE BOTTOMLESS PIT.

I floundered in a pit of sin,
Full of weakness, full of care,
And on the brink one sang, to win
My footsteps to his heavenly air.
I turned in wrath against his song,
And made a tempest of my rage,
And blew tempestuous notes along
The echoing iron of my cage.
He bade me find a golden door,
Opened by a golden key:
Iron roof, and walls, and floor,
Were all that ever I could see.
I turned in wrath against his song,
And made a tempest of my rage,
And rushed in burning zeal along
To the black bottom of my cage.

197

But bottomless it was, in sooth,
And through the world it did extend;
Folded in my wings of truth,
I crept out at the further end.
And there again the sun I found,
And there I found a garden bright;
And while he deems me blindly bound
I weave the flowers of his delight.