On the Painting Tasso in Prison

The poet, sick, and with his chest half bare 

Tramples a manuscript in his dark stall, 

Gazing with terror at the yawning stair 

Down which his spirit finally must fall.

Intoxicating laughs which fill his prison 

Invite him to the Strange and the Absurd. 

With ugly shapes around him have arisen 

Both Doubt and Terror, multiform and blurred.

This genius cooped in an unhealthy hovel,

These cries, grimaces, ghosts that squirm and grovel

Whirling around him, mocking as they call,

This dreamer whom these horrors rouse with screams,

They are your emblem, Soul of misty dreams

Round whom the Real erects its stifling wall.