Page:Dreams and Dust, by Don Marquis.djvu/32


 * I have spun with her dervish priests;
 * I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts

And found love sleeping there; I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams;
 * I have sunk with her dull despair;

I have sweat with her travails and cursed with her pains;
 * I have swelled with her foolish pride;

I have raged through a thick red mist at one with her branded Cains,
 * With her broken Christs have died.

O beautiful half-god city of visions and love!
 * O hideous half-brute city of hate!

O wholly human and baffled and passionate town!
 * The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight,

Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a soul,
 * I have known, I have felt, and been shaken thereby!
 * Wakened and shaken and broken,

For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb through thy rapid veins
 * The beat of the heart of a world.