Page:The ascent of man by Blind, Mathilde.djvu/60


 * Lust, ambition, hatred, awe,
 * Clashing loudly with the law,
 * But the phantasms of the mind
 * Who shall master, yea, who bind!

What help is there without, what hope within
 * Of rescue from the immemorial strife?
 * What will redeem him from the spasm of life,

With all its devious ways of shame and sin?
 * What will redeem him from ancestral greeds,
 * Grey legacies of hate and hoar misdeeds.

Which from the guilty past Man doth inherit—
 * The past that is bound up with him, and part
 * Of the pulsations of his inmost heart,

And of the vital motions of his spirit?
 * Ages mazed in tortuous errors,
 * Ghostly fears, and haunting terrors,
 * Minds bewitched that served as mirrors
 * For the foulest fancies bred
 * In a fasting hermit's head,