The Failed Spirit by Stevie Smith

THE FAILED SPIRIT

To those who are isolate
War comes, promising respite,
Making what seems to be up to the moment the most successful endeavour
Against the fort of the failed spirit that is alone for ever.
Spurious failed spirit, adamantine wasture,
Crop, spirit, crop, thy stony pasture!

 
Stevie Smith, Selected Poems, ed. by James MacGibbon (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 118.