When I look in the mirror
I see only a sneer,
A hardened mask void of weakness.
But beneath the veneer
A child appears
Afraid of the darkness in here.

And there,
  beneath my umbrella,
    a puddle formed.
      Tears and rain mingled,
        a stream formed and
          sped toward the storm drain,
            never to be distinguishable again.

I was startled from my thoughts today
By a frightening thing on the wall
That looked so twisted and gnarled and dark
I hardly knew it at all.
Then it dawned on me -
'Twas a familiar complexion.
"That's a rather ugly face you're making,"
I said to my reflection.

A peculiar feeling,
it wasn't quite joy,
but rather, amusement.
Still, it was a smile,
a smile in spite of himself,
in spite of his aching self.

My heart is not composed of stone,
It's made of flint and steel.
Instead of dead weight in my chest,
It's fire that I feel.

Though I the one the arrow pierced,
  we both displayed the symptom:
You, the one that plunged the blade,
  and I, your willing victim.
A madness, hence, burned in our blood;
  no draught could quench the fever.
A trick so cunningly conceived,
  'twould swindle the Deceiver.
This double blade, this binding act,
  for which we cry, "we must!"
A crop both yielding grief and bliss:
  the double-edge of Lust.

How sweetly sings the lark for hidden Spring
And opens up a path for her to tread;
That with a song or melody doth bring
A single flower, delicate and red.

As dew bedazzles shoots of em'rald grass,
The greedy earth doth quench its endless thirst.
The sun transforms the mountains, black to brass,
And stirs the world from Winter's spell accursed.

The dull and hardened earth that slumbers here
Shall reminisce of warm and kinder days;
And thus commence the deed of every year:
The blossoming of Spring's all-loving gaze.

And thus, upon a soul Spring makes her sign:
A heart from which her love and beauty shine.