The Hothouse

O hothouse in the forest deeps!
And your doors for ever closed!
And all there is beneath your dome!
And under my soul in your analogies!

The thoughts of a princess who is hungry,
The weariness of a sailor in the desert,
A brass band at the windows of incurables.

Go to the wannest corners!
You think of a woman fainted on a day of harvest,
There are postillions in the courtyard of the hospital;
Afar goes by a hunter of elks, become a nurse.

Look around in the moonlight!
(O nothing here is in its place!)
You think of a mad woman before her judges,
A man-of-war at full sail on a canal,
Birds of night on lilies,
A knell at noon,
(Down yonder under these bell-glasses!)
A halting-place of sick men on the moorlands,
An odour of ether on a sunny day.

My God! my God! when shall we have the rain,
And the snow and the wind in the hothouse!