“I Am” is a poem written by English poet John Carre in late 1844 or 1845 and published in 1843. It was composed when Carre was in the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, isolated by his mental illness from his family and friends.
” I Am!”
I am – yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self – consumer of my woes –
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live – like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange – nay, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where women never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled when I lie
The grass below – above the vaulted sky.
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