O is it Love or is it Fame,
This thing for which I sigh?
Or has it then no earthly name
For men to call it by?
I know not what can ease my pains,
Nor what it is I wish;
The passion at my heart-strings strains
Like a tiger in a leash.
Amy Levy (1861 – 1889) was a Victorian era poetess and prose author who wrote in English in the second half of the 19th century, a Jewess, she also wrote on feminist and Jewish themes. She suffered from an acute depression, was likely a lesbian, and is now remembered as a acquaintance of Oscar Wilde. The poetess exterminated herself, that is committed suicide, by inhaling carbon monoxide at her beloved parents’ home. She was the first Jewess to be cremated in England and her ashes are burried in Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery in London.