Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
In Defense of the Earth (1956), She Is Away
Context: Now I know surely and forever,
However much I have blotted our
Waking love, its memory is still
there. And I know the web, the net,
The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
One brief instant it was not blind, nor
Trapped, not crippled. For one heart beat the
Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
I who am lost and damned with words,
Whose words are a business and an art,
I have no words. These words, this poem, this
Is all confusion and ignorance.
But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
My heart beat one free beat and sent
Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
“How much of the full heart must be
A seal’d book at whose contents we tremble?”
(1837 1) (Vol. 49) We Might Have Been
The Monthly Magazine
“And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead.”
Suicide note
“I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.”
As quoted in Walker, 1997.
Song lyrics, 50 Words for Snow (2011)
“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
Variant: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Source: Hamlet
