Why Do Ye Torture Me?

Why are ye torturing me, O desires of my heart?

Torturing me and paining me by day and by night?

Hunting me as a poor deer would be hunted on a hill,

A poor long-wearied deer with the hound-pack after him?

There’s no ease to my paining in the loneliness of the hills,

But the cry of the hunters terrifically to be heard,

The cry of my desires haunting me without respite,—

O ravening hounds, long is your run!

No satisfying can come to my desires while I live,

For the satisfaction I desired yesterday is no satisfaction,

And the hound-pack is the greedier of the satisfaction it has got,—

And forever I shall not sleep till I sleep in the grave.