Initial Response to the Poem

I find the poem very dark, creepy and yet hauntingly sad. I believe it is about a man who dreams his life away. He is caught within his head in this painful daydream, and he dreams of being intriguing and exciting and dangerous or mysterious. He is waiting for this moment for him to do something special, but the clock is ticking and he is getting older and he is too afraid, he doesn't have the courage or the daring. He feels painfully ordinary. He misses out on reality because he spends so much time in this torturous state of boredom but wanting to be extreme.

My favourite quote that demonstrates this is:

"Do I dare
 Disturb the universe?"

I just feel it's really haunting and sad in a way, because he feels like he must be a shadow, he can't be the light of the world. There are some very dark sides to the poem as well, where it shows some of his darker dreams, which I think links very well with Artaud's idea of our dark inner selves.

"There will be time, there will be time
 To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
 There will be time to murder and create,
 And time for all the works and days of hands
 That lift and drop a question on your plate"

The sudden thrown in idea of murder took me by surprise slightly, as I wasn't expecting it to get that intense and all of a sudden the poem seems quite sinister. The power of dreams and the affect on the mind seems quite haunting.