Two Unpublished Fragments by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
A.: Who are you ?
B.: What I cannot express with human language Nor thou with thought accept. What do you see ?
A.: A wild, old creature.
B.: An old man ? Know then, Across the flaming orifice of hell Passes, as through a magic lamp its glass, A frozen ocean, on whose midst is graven The wrizled, grey resemblance of a man, Who lived his centuries before the clouds Had stolen the first drop of the broad flood ; And the reflection of that antique form, Ruddy and firm when Hell cheers up and blazes, Pale, when it falls, or darkened by the passing Of fiends between it and the limning fires, Now, at this midnight moment, dyes the sight Of some distrusting youth, and, with a voice Strayed from a sleeper's tongue, seems aikest me,
Speaks just as I do—
A. : What do you mean ? _ B.: That I am Adam-gotten, A soul and skeleton in a flesh-doublet : What else ? Dost think that I could be this shade
II.
Whereby the king and beggar all he down On straw or purple-tissue, are but bones And air and blood; equal to one another And to the unborn and buried : so we go. Plieing ourselves among the uneoneeived And the old ghosts, wantOnlY, snffiingly, Pei sleep is fair and warm . . .
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