One Hour to Madness and Joy

  One hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
  (What is this that frees me so in storms?
  What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
  O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
  O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
  I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

  O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me
      in defiance of the world!
  O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
  O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of
      a determind man.

  O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
      untied and illumind!
  O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
  To be absolvd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and
      you from yours!
  To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
  To have the gag removd from ones mouth!
  To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.

  O something unprovd! something in a trance!
  To escape utterly from others anchors and holds!
  To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
  To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
  To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
  To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
  To be lost if it must be so!
  To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
  With one brief hour of madness and joy.