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200 Oh, never think that life thereby has ceased:

Eating and drinking and the will to strive

(And sleep by rock and rainbow after feast)

And, the great thrill of being here alive,

Will yet remain in birth succeeding birth,

With trails still open from the north and east,

All up and down this goodly frame, the earth—

Will yet remain in fish and fowl and beast!...

And, lo, the Beasts not only wake in Man

Hope for the Life-Force still, beyond his span;

But offer him, before he sink and cease,

New life his own and intervals of peace.

Nay, more than Egypt's Cult and India's Kine,

The Animals may vouch us the Divine;

And Man may yet outwit his doom forecast—

Even by becoming one with them at last!

V

Why were we all so self-absorbed in woe

Through those five years not very long ago?

We are not what we seem, and we have powers

That touch on deeper, other Life than ours:

Though path were lost that Christ and Buddha trod

Whereby the self may lose itself in God,

There yet remained to us the blest escape,

By sprawling trance in disencumbered hours