Set Me Free
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Set Me Free
Set me free from all pain,Drop by drop, the pain of pain remembered,I would be drunk to this world,I would be drunk—die to the roots—Every living creature asleep, except those in pain,Drop by drop, die to the roots,I died in the great frost, 1607, a bastard,Turn your eyes to cinders.
I am for the West, in a trance of zephyr,My companions, angels from the North,On the upper side of rain, in the country above the clouds.Nothing is true, they say, but in the West,Black alder and blueberries, acidic duff,I hear the red eye, the phoebe, and the cuckoo,Old parents, and parents' parents, dreary warblers,I worm my way amid the marl.All the fountains of nature have been sealed,I can see defaced inscriptions, and the severed hands of thieves,The sun has no heirs—set me free—I am threading all our woods, and thaws of ice,There is a lifeless air, as in a seething cauldron,I am lost, I am lost, and to the East incline,Sweet mountain berries in the thin-air,Drunk with swamp-pink, remember,The eyes of cinder see outside the world.Set me free, drop by drop, from all pain… [End Page 610]
Ben Simons is Editor of Historic Nantucket and Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator of the Nantucket Historical Association in Massachusetts. His exhibitions and collections publications include The Nantucket Actors Colony, Greater Light: A House History, and The Nantucket Art Colony. His other publications are Maritime Maverick: The Maritime Collection of William I. Koch, A Yachtsman's Eye: The Glen S. Foster Collection of Marine Paintings, and articles in Renaissance Magazine, Nantucket Guide, Nantucket Today, Antiques and Fine Art, and other periodicals.
