Breaking Free (original) (raw)

I usually don't write in meter, but somehow I felt it was proper for this one (ehh..the meter is inconsistent in some places...). This is one of my favorite poems. I love it, but I always feel biased. Am I being delusional, or is it really good?

Breaking Free

I

I walked forlorn the steady path that life
Did beseech me so, traveling yonder to
Inevitable hyperborean
Glow; fate for all, fate for me, as is decree.
The path, I followed--yet I walked I kew not
Where, only how the end would fair, every gilded
Way, each solemn road, all countless crossings
Long since tried, and long since trod: all were
Different, all were same, once way treks with
Many names; there forlorn I walked those steady
Pathes. Cold and tired, I continued on, one
Of many, one of all, till that day, a quiet
Midsummer's Eve, that day of days when shores
Of sand and rock I did seek and salted
Wind rose up, finally within my reach.

II

Was I free, like air to flow? Like wind over
The endless sea to blow? The course I chose,
Was it me? Or some trick of memory?--
A measure of fate I could not overcome,
Unlike that splendid chaos of the wind,
Hard but subtle, subtle but vivid, a
Myriad figure unconfined--Or, was
I, too, like this wind? A force unrestrained,
Bound solely to the inexorable fancy
Of imagination imagining
What imagined cannot be?--Had I lost
My way, had I trapped myself in that
Labyrinth false, and ignored, in so doing
What the heart had always felt? And--as I
Thought, down that aged path, I, again, proceeded.

III

Upon the jagged rocks I stood, overlooking
A silent sea, desperately wishing
To feel free--I felt it in that night air,
And so did think: Did that wind, that Zephyr
Clear, comprehend despair? Could it know man's
Mortal restraint? That our stuff is but a
Celestial feint? Had it viewed our dull
Course? Felt our deepest remorse? The path, it
Led on and on, and so, unfulfilled
Was my destiny, but that spirit free--
How it beckoned me! That weary road, could
I cast it aside, and hence set upon
The sky?--Then I saw it plain, my plea, fate
Disdained as that force fair I admired
So, down that wretched path me it started to blow!

IV

No! I cried, I screamed to little avail,
It seemed, I felt my end was near, that life
I held, what many think dear, was useless, I
Feared! What shame, what vast waste! To have loved
Too Few!--To have seen so narrow! Petty
Trepidation! Was this not my course? That
Same prostrate path for all? No! I shouted,
I refused to go; the calm sea then burst,
That chameleon rash, and set on me
Tempests great against a futile wish. The
Road, my dread, came ever near, still the fight
Was not lost--I raged against that errant wind,
That death-veiled sea, all to taste liberty!
Could not that up-turned nature see, to die
There, that loathsome path I would still defy!

V

I struggled there through ages unseen, and
Could not tell where in the maelstrom I had
Been, but to its fury, I could never give
In, and then, on those stones over a frothing
Sea, peace spread from within my core--that wind,
That liquid fierce, my soul they had never
Pierced; I was they, they were I--no longer
Could it be denied, and as lightning
Flashed and waves forcefully clashed, I turned my
Head to see that bondage of then past
Destiny stretching beyond what any man
Could bear, and so knew what had to be done:
I faced my nemisis, I faced myself,
And without longing, and without my fear,
Cast myself in; that path never to reappear.