It is with a strange malice

That I distort the world.

Ah! that ill humors

Should mask as white girls.

And ah! that Scaramouche

Should have a black barouche.

The sorry verities!

Yet in excess, continual,

There is cure of sorrow.

Permit that if as ghost I come

Among the people burning in me still,

I come as belle design

Of foppish line.

And I, then, tortured for old speech—

A white of wildly woven rings;

I, weeping in a calcined heart—

My hands such sharp, imagined things.