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Reducing Suicide: A National Imperative
Encompass’d with a thousand dangers,
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors…
I … in a fleshy tomb, am
Buried above ground.
—WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800)
From the poem “Lines Written During a Period of Insanity”.
Cowper on several occasions tried to hang, poison, or stab himself. The lines above were composed after one of his suicide attempts.
