The Hand That Follows Intellect

Lord Free Me Of Myself, So I Can Please You!

Already At Sixteen, My Mind Was A Battlefield: My Love Of Pagan Beauty, The Male Nude, At War With My Religious Faith. A Polarity Of Themes And Forms: One Spiritual, The Other Earthly.

Is It Any Wonder, Since, When Near The Fire, I Was Melted And Burned, If Now That It's Extinguished Outside Me, It Besets And Consumes Me Inside, And Bit By Bit Reduces Me To Ashes?

I Couldn't Give You Something Mediocre Even If That's All You Asked For.

Led By Long Years To My Last Hours, Too Late, O World, I Know Your Joys For What They Are. You Promise A Peace Which Is Not Yours To Give And The Repose That Dies Before It Is Born. The Years Of Fear And Shame To Which Heaven Now Set A Term, Renew Nothing In Me But The Old Sweet Error In Which, Living Overlong A Man Kills His Soul With No Gain To His Body. I Say And I Know Having Put It To The Proof, That He Has The Better Part In Heaven Whose Death Falls Nearest His Birth.