When I was but a babe unborn,
Still cradled in my mother's womb,
A fiend crept up to me one morn
And spoke with frost of icy tomb,
"What, pray, do you desire to hate
Because of how it chills you so?
What thing do you from now debate
To be so cruel as to forgo?
This fear will follow you through life
And plague you like a shadow deep;
Its pain will slice you like a knife
And leave you with but naught to keep."
I thought a time, and all the while
I turned from its unyielding stare,
And then at last I went the mile
As I felt strong the fiend's despair:
"I think, perhaps, the horrid thing
That will so chill me to the bone,
The thing that I will always fear,
Will be, only, to be alone."