Why still increase the overwhelming odds
Against us—add this self-inflicted curse—
That we should hunt each other in the path
Of cataclysm, stay to vent our wrath
One on the other in the middle-way
Of swift annihilation, tear and slay
Beneath the onslaught of the universe,
Wage civil war, our seats stormed by the gods?
E'en the wild beasts forego their lust for blood,
Fleeing in panic through a blazing wood....
Mysterious is the lot of common lives
Lost in the mass,
Anonymous as leaves or blades of grass
In the thick verdure of humanity,
And inexistent to the powers that be:
Such were these all;
And so like leaves they fall,
Or one by one,
Or, when some storm of retribution drives
Over the face of mankind at the call
Of surcharged passions,
Unnumbered from their humble holdings wrenched,
Before the blast they run,
Creatures of life's blind impulse and its altering fashions,
To the deep drifts of still oblivion;
Save where their thought survives
In that sequestered spot where they were known,
In some frail fort of love 'gainst death and time entrenched.
Even their vices were not all their own,
Inevitably sown
In childhood's hospitable tilth
By the thick-flying seed
Of man's continuing legacy of ill,
His cherished heirlooms of disease and filth,
And rank depravities of ancient date,
13
