Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/126



TRUTH: Is a flower which blooms and is gone Less beautiful than the oak, which endures for a century? Joy and Beauty are the breath of Creation ; These are the reasons for the mystery of Life. These are the reasons for the mystery of Death. And who denies Beauty, denies the soul.

POET: I have pushed aside the curtains of the universe And looked in ; and there. In a desolation never to be broken. Brooded my soul, in a great loneliness. I said to myself, "I will carve god-hood "Out of manhood ; "I will carve God out of myself."

XXIV. POET: There is a mighty throbbing of the heart of the World. The old Mother quivers with a fearful pulsing.

TRUTH: The birth throes. A new life is to be bom.

POET: Broad as the front of the sea, rolling, heaving, advancing,

I behold a grey and sullen multitude. Like the sea, it reaches restlessly beyond the sunrise and Steadily it rolls forward its crested might, overwhelming.

TRUTH: Revolution.

POET: The land shall be made clean, as meadows new-swept by

the west wind. It will break in thunder on the shore, spreading purity.

1 20