You may have perceived, madam,

That I have suffered great sickness of mind

to have become so wretched,

but none may conceive the horrors of my toil.

How I worked, oppressed with a slow fever, ’til I collapsed

and slept for thirteen days, dead to all but my dreaming.

When I awoke, I read all my profane fingers had written, 

but my labours offered no more than frustration.

I stopped speaking to my wife in the modern vernacular

as I felt it could not convey the wonder

in my heart, nor the discipline of mind I sought,

and she thought me mad and moved to her mother’s.

Friends and associates alike shunned me like a daemon

upon introduction to my new manner of speech.

Children mocked me, and barmen would not serve me.

Still, the madness of language would not sway.

Night after comfortless night,

day after blistered day,

I must write and write and learn to write

just like Mary Shelley.