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| THE SICK grapes on the chair by the bed lie prone; at the window | |
| The tassel of the blind swings gently, tapping the pane, | |
| As a little wind comes in. | |
| The room is the hollow rind of a fruit, a gourd | |
| Scooped out and dry, where a spider, | 5 |
| Folded in its legs as in a bed, | |
| Lies on the dust, watching where is nothing to see but twilight and walls. | |
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| And if the day outside were mine! What is the day | |
| But a grey cave, with great grey spider-cloths hanging | |
| Low from the roof, and the wet dust falling softly from them | 10 |
| Over the wet dark rocks, the houses, and over | |
| The spiders with white faces, that scuttle on the floor of the cave! | |
| I am choking with creeping, grey confinedness. | |
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| But somewhere birds, beside a lake of light, spread wings | |
| Larger than the largest fans, and rise in a stream upwards | 15 |
| And upwards on the sunlight that rains invisible, | |
| So that the birds are like one wafted feather, | |
| Small and ecstatic suspended over a vast spread country. | |
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