Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/26

 With us back untold periods they trace

The issuing of the common race,

And one with us to-day they too embark

With each new moment as upon the crest

Of time's great tidal wave

Down the amazing venture of the next

Invisible moment, even as we, perplexed,

With us still humanly brave

To affront the unimagined, self-possessed.

The fellowship of mystery is ours,

The confraternity of nakedness,

Huddling together in the cosmic cold

No bond we hold

Like that of earth's duress

And common awe before the blank that lowers,

The mute Before and the unanswering After,

The fiendish laughter

Of all the mindless powers

And wild insensate storms that with their lulls and swellings

Rave round our human dwellings.

Illiterate or scholar, Celt or Slav,

No tie we have

As when we stand before the enigmatic grave.

Their ill is ours;

Life in all creatures suffers violence,

Existence is attainted in the scourge,

Night gains upon the light-redeemèd hours.

Our lives so merge

With all who share the dower of sentience

Their pain reverberates through the universal sense

And wakes far-prompted spasms

Of unaccountable pain,

Even as their distant triumphs move obscure enthusiasms,

The swift contagion of their spiritual plague

Breeds in us nostalgias vague

That give intelligence 20