Quandary
There is no shelter anywhere
For her whose wonder, like a hare,
Bursts through the briars of despair,
And bleeds and leaps away.
There is no cave where she may keep.
The stream she drinks of is too deep
For her to ford. Her little sleep
The dreadful stars betray.
The panther heart within her breast
Will never drum her pain to rest,
Who so much fears to be possessed
By tyrannous circumstance.
Though she but stands, she seems to flee,
She trembles so to be as free
As if she'd shed mortality,
And smiled at her own trance.
How to sustain the miracle
Of being, that like a muted bell,
Or like some ocean-breathing shell,
Quivers, intense and still?
How close to her the golden room
That the world builds of its own gloom?
Her patient, furtive, fertile doom
Is there no way to kill?