Jonathan Swift; His Last Illness

Thou sawest from far the curse thou might'st not stay,
Most mighty spirit, strong to love and hate.
For what great sin, sinned in some former state,
Was thy soul forced to contemplate that day
Which should not at one blow take life away,
But on each vital sense shut gate by gate, —
Until thy lord's unfathomable hate,
Supreme, relentless, and which none gainsay.

Left thy great brain confounded in black night.
And wild with pain? Yea, thou wert all alone.
Shut fast in night, as in a living tomb
Where no sound was; Death quenched thy spirit's light
So long before, oh, racked in uttermost gloom,
He made thy poor, dark, tortured body his own.