At the time of puberty I had obsessions.

I walk’d always with downcast eyes and blush’d scarlet to meet anyone in the street.

I thought I harbour’d a secret vice which none had discover’d before me.

I caught sight of my figure distorted in a shop window and thereafter imagined that I had a physical deformity which others ignored through kindness.

I believed that I stank.

If one raised his handkerchief to his nose even across the road I thought it was to shut off my noisesomeness.

The schoolmaster with whom I had most to do was an ignorant self-complacent tyrant. He did me great wrongs.

No one understood me. None explained to me nor relieved me.

All shunned me. I suffered in silence, alone.

SEER:

Poor wraith, I pity you! Speak on! Unbosom now your soul!

Altho’ you are but an illusory reflexion of mine own past self.

SPECTRE:

As a babe I came forth from the womb and sucked at my mother’s breast with gurgling and deep satisfied sighs.

As an infant wee my fingers sought to my flesh unconscious happy.

Lying in my cot I caressed myself with innocent imaginings.

When I was now eight years old I went to the sea coast where I beheld the village boys romp and paddle in stark nakedness upon the beach.

Their forms were white and smooth like lilies.

My young heart ached with longing.

At about twelve years old I began to feel my sex.

One night on going to bed I stripped my skin bare before the glass and surveyed my parts in different attitudes back and front.

Behold I appeared lovely and I thanked heaven that I was a boy.

I straddled the rocking-horse with my fork I squeezed harder and harder upon the cushion-pad.

My face flashed my eyes sparkled. My heart beat faster faster.

Thrills passed through me. I had a movement of ecstacy.

Suddenly a chill of disgust came over me.

Revolted at myself I got into my nightshirt and slunk ashamed into bed.

My father came in the room to me with anxious face and said, What have you been doing little son? What have you been doing?

I replied, Nothing, papa, and he went away anxious.

I became surly nervous reticent by day, rejoicing in solitude by night, a butt for my school fellows, hearing them hint, from their knowledge at what I understood not, longing for explanation but kept out.

My lustful imaginings ran wild, I took part in orgies of phantasy.

Certain of my mates I loved passionately for their wayward beauty and yearn’d in secret for their caresses, but they rebuff’d me.

At night our invisible bodies met towselling in unlicensed intercourse.

As yet I knew nothing of the business of parenthood.

Nobody inform’d me. I long’d for relief, but none was vouchsafed me.

At eighteen years one Sunday in the mighty vaulted church I caught the glance of a dark-eyed chorister.

Instantly our souls flew to meet each other in wild embrace.

Had we not loved since the beginning with deepest love for ever and ever?

Such was the awakening of my spring. My eyes were open’d to love.

My friends perceived it and felt for me.

At this time I was exceedingly comely in both face and form and most happy and free from care.

My friends delighted in me and I in them.

We lay abed bestowing close kisses of comradeship.

Then providence fulfilled my desire and gave me as a lover a youth of fifteen years.

Idling we pass’d our sunny days bathing in sequester’d streams,

Sprawling with gold-brown bodies side-by-side beneath the noonday beam,

Fondling, spending, silently embracing.

The mounting heart, the shorten’d breath, the surging onslaught of desire,

Sweet pulsing short-lived agony seeking relief, the brimming consolation and flood,

The drooping languor, the heavenly listless content with bright swimming pupils gazing up seraphical at the azure vault . . .