The mother-deep, wise, yearning, bound,

I feel it press beneath my heart,

the deep where I were free and crown’d

o’er mine own realm, alone, apart.

It haunts, a grey unlit abysm,

thro’ solitary eyelet-slits

pierced in the mean inflicted schism

where day deludes my purblind wits.

But mighty hands have lock’d the keep

and flung the key, long ages past:

there lies no way into the deep

that is myself, alone, aghast.