WORLD-SORROW

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 solacèd,

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.