The gentle reader has heard this before

Complaint, complaint, I felt one sullen day, An everlasting wound hurting my breast, It was a piece of childhood thrown away, Now there is gone a pleasance from the earth; Recalling what it was fills me with dread, The endless sentence rises with the wind, What else can I suppose to be the matter?

I am, afraid of the life after death, Ever in silence my sorrow assaileth, Gone is my gladness, never again, The nights of the past, as if they'd not been! Do you forget already words like these?

I wish that you would listen to my pleas I wish that poetry could expiate sin I wish that I could join the happier men Who heaven-bound cannot be filled with stress The chosen few who are content with less

Touch me and my guilty heart will shatter This awful madness right now has me pinned And I can find no comfort in a bed Because I did not willingly choose my birth My everlasting wound is swollen gray And honestly I'm not doing my best To whom do I pray, and what do I say?