Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/90

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse Diverse philosophies to tear the world. You knew, when the green cell arose, that even The You which formed it, moving on, would bring Races and breeds, madmen, tyrants, slaves, The idiot child, the murderer, the insane— All springing from the action of one law. You knew the enmity that lies between The lives of micro-beings and our own. You knew How man would rise to vision of himself, Immortal only in the race's life; And past the atom and the first glint of life, Saw him with soul enraptured, yet o'ershadowed Amid self-consciousness!


 * A Voice:

I knew. But this your fault: you see Me as apart, Over, removed, at enmity with you. You are in Me, and of Me, even at one With Me. But there's your soul—your soul may be The germinal cell of vaster evolution! Why try to tell you? If I gave a cell Voice to inquire, and it should ask you this: "After me what—a stalk, a flower, life That swims or crawls?" And if I gave to you Wisdom to say: "You shall become a reed By the water's edge"—how could the cell foresee What the reed is, bending beneath the wind