Cale Young Rice Poems >>
World-Sorrow

(_The Cry of the Modern_)


  World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.
  Nothing there is of pain but echoes down
  My breast with wan reverberance and pang,
  And peaceless passes thro it evermore.
  The struck bird's cry wounds my all-feeling blood
  To pity that will not be solac?d,
  Sounds on me like far pleas of the unborn
  Against predestined days. A withering bud
  Brews barrenness thro all the verdancy
  Of Spring. And in a tear--tho anguish shape it
  On the warm lid of joy--earth's Tragedy,
  Whose curtain falls not for it has no end,
  Comes mirrored to me as infinite Ill.

  How shall I 'scape it! How, O how escape
  The trooping of prayers lost upon the void,
  Of hopes misborn and fading not to rest!
  How shall I burn not with all vain-lit loves
  That alway billow thro me their slow fire
  Fed by the agony of new-broke hearts!
  How loose me from too long commisery
  For those whom unrequiting Time has given
  To the altar of the aching world's unrest!
  A grief immitigable to the Hand
  Whose mystery of returning sun can heal
  Winter away, seems here; a grief but calm
  Of immortality can make forgiven!

  For even as all the gleaming girth of stars
  That wreathe the Illimitable beauteously
  Quench not the vast of night, so do all joys
  Life strews along her passing to the grave
  Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death.
  And O Humanity, long-suffering Harp
  Of passion-strings unnumbered, shall His skill
  Flung thus forever o'er thy fragile rest
  Build but these harmonies that seem sometimes
  Unworth the misery of the trampled worm?
  Would, would I were not vibrant with all strains
  He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned!
  World-sorrow have I known, like unto God.