Oh world so blind, so dumb to our desiring,--
To the vague cry and clamour of our being!
Oh world so dark to our supreme aspiring,--
To the pitiful strange travail of our freeing!
We weary not for love and lips to love us;
These have been ours too often and too long;
We have been hived too close; too sweet above us
Tastes the bee's mouth to our honey-wearied tongue.
Not love, not love! Love was our first undoing,
We have lived too long on heart-beats. None can tame
The mind's new hunger, famished and pursuing,
Unleashed, and crying its oppressor's name.
All that the world could give man's mind inherits:
Two paths were set us. Baffled, weeping, yearning,
Tossed between God and Man, rebellious spirits,
We wandered, now escaped and unreturning.
We are arming, waking, terribly unfolding,
The spent world shudders in a new creation,
A dread and pitiless flowering beholding,
Burst from the dark root of our long frustration!