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Title: World-Sorrow
Author: Cale Young Rice [
More Titles by Rice]
(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 solaced,
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.
[The end]
Cale Young Rice's poem: World-Sorrow
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