What’s going on in my heart and in my brain,
My blood, my life, all over me, all through me?
It cannot last! Quickly I shall not be
What I am now. – Oh I am changing, changing,
Dreadfully changing. – Aye, even as I stand
A transformation will come over me,
I am unsouled, dishumanised, and now
My passions swell and grow like brutes conceived;
My feet will soon be fixed – and every limb
Be swollen, distorted, till I am become
A wild old mountain, forest over-grown,
And have a dreadful tempest for a voice;
Aye, the abhorred conscience of this murder,
It will grow up a Lion, all alone,
A mighty-maned, grave-mouthed prodigy,
And live within my caves; - the other passions,
Some will be snakes, and bears, and savage wolves –
And when I lie tremendous in the desart
Or abandoned sea, murderers and idiot men
Will come to live upon my ragged sides,
Die and be buried in me. – Now it comes,
I break and magnify. – Heaven pours down sleet
And snow and hail, and hell rains up its fire.
