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I am not yet born; O hear me. |
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Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the |
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club-footed ghoul come near me. |
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I am not yet born, console me. |
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I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me, |
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with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me, |
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on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me. |
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I am not yet born; provide me |
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With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk |
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to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light |
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in the back of my mind to guide me. |
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I am not yet born; forgive me |
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For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words |
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when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me, |
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my treason engendered by traitors beyond me, |
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my life when they murder by means of my |
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hands, my death when they live me. |
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I am not yet born; rehearse me |
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In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when |
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old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains |
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frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white |
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waves call me to folly and the desert calls |
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me to doom and the beggar refuses |
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my gift and my children curse me. |
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I am not yet born; O hear me, |
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Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God |
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come near me. |
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I am not yet born; O fill me |
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With strength against those who would freeze my |
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humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, |
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would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with |
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one face, a thing, and against all those |
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who would dissipate my entirety, would |
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blow me like thistledown hither and |
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thither or hither and thither |
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like water held in the |
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hands would spill me. |
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Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. |
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Otherwise kill me. |