Others, I Am Not the First

Others, I am not the first,

Have willed more mischief than they durst:

If in the breathless night I too

Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,

Have stood and sweated hot and cold,

And through their reins in ice and fire

Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,

But I like them shall win my way

Lastly to the bed of mould

Where there's neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow

Plays no wind of healing now,

And fire and ice within me fight

Beneath the suffocating night.
 

A.E. Housman