July's Recollection

It was yet night, but July nights are short.
Soon after midnight, dawn comes.
I had waked from the trance like dream;
called to resume the previous eventide musing:
A recollection of July's passing days...

My Dream seemed to have vanished,
as I stepped onto the brink of the month,
Some obstacles had intervened between me and it.
All was obscurity...
I put out my hand to feel: There was only darkness mass before me.

Clinging desperately to the fading Hope,
I felt sorely the urge to weep, yet restrained it to the top of my lungs.
My nature contravened, my faculties paralysed.
I'm contradicting myself, almost rave in my restlessness:
The guiding light must shine somewhere.
Eventually a silhoutte of hope must rise to view.

It is indeed hard work to control the workings of inclination
and turn the bent of nature;
But I was resolved it could be done.
I have the power to make my own fate,

When energies seem to demand a sustanance they cannot get,
When our will strains after a path we may not follow,
I need neither starve for inanition, nor stand in despair:
I have but to seek another nourishment for the mind,
And to hew out for the adventurous foot:
A road as direct and droad as the one Fortune has blocked up against me.
A road I had never traveled, but often noticed, and wonder where it led.

Mutinying against Fate, claiming my rights.
What was awaiting at the end of the road?

No reflections was to be allowed now:
Not one glance was to be cast back;
Not even one forward.

Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future.
The first was a page so heavenly sweet -so deadly sad at the same time,
that to read one line of it would dissolve one courage
and break down my energy.
The last was an awful blank:
Something like the world when the deluge was gone by.
Tither I bent my steps.

I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth.
But I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers.
And less withering dread of opressions.

The End, my recollection of July's passing days.

Picture via {this is glamorous}