| TO the elements it came from | |
| Everything will return. | |
| Our bodies to earth, | |
| Our blood to water, | |
| Heat to fire, | 5 |
| Breath to air. | |
| They were well born, they will be well entomb’d! | |
| But mind?… | |
| |
| And we might gladly share the fruitful stir | |
| Down in our mother earth’s miraculous womb! | 10 |
| Well might it be | |
| With what roll’d of us in the stormy main! | |
| We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air, | |
| Or with the nimble radiant life of fire! | |
| |
| But mind—but thought— | 15 |
| If these have been the master part of us— | |
| Where will they find their parent element? | |
| What will receive them, who will call them home? | |
| But we shall still be in them, and they in us, | |
| And we shall be the strangers of the world, | 20 |
| And they will be our lords, as they are now; | |
| And keep us prisoners of our consciousness, | |
| And never let us clasp and feel the All | |
| But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils. | |
| And we shall be unsatisfied as now; | 25 |
| And we shall feel the agony of thirst, | |
| The ineffable longing for the life of life | |
| Baffled for ever: and still thought and mind | |
| Will hurry us with them on their homeless march, | |
| Over the unallied unopening earth, | 30 |
| Over the unrecognizing sea; while air | |
| Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth, | |
| And fire repel us from its living waves | |
| And then we shall unwillingly return | |
| Back to this meadow of calamity, | 35 |
| This uncongenial place, this human life; | |
| And in our individual human state | |
| Go through the sad probation all again, | |
| To see if we will poise our life at last, | |
| To see if we will now at last be true | 40 |
| To our own only true, deep-buried selves, | |
| Being one with which we are one with the whole world; | |
| Or whether we will once more fall away | |
| Into some bondage of the flesh or mind, | |
| Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze | 45 |
| Forg’d by the imperious lonely thinking-power. | |
| And each succeeding age in which we are born | |
| Will have more peril for us than the last; | |
| Will goad our senses with a sharper spur, | |
| Will fret our minds to an intenser play, | 50 |
| Will make ourselves harder to be discern’d. | |
| And we shall struggle awhile, gasp and rebel; | |
| And we shall fly for refuge to past times, | |
| Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness; | |
| And the reality will pluck us back, | 55 |
| Knead us in its hot hand, and change our nature. | |
| And we shall feel our powers of effort flag, | |
| And rally them for one last fight, and fail; | |
| And we shall sink in the impossible strife, | |
| And be astray for ever. | 60 |
| |
| Slave of sense | |
| I have in no wise been; but slave of thought?— | |
| And who can say: I have been always free, | |
| Lived ever in the light of my own soul?— | |
| I cannot! I have lived in wrath and gloom, | 65 |
| Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man, | |
| Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light. | |
| But I have not grown easy in these bonds— | |
| But I have not denied what bonds these were! | |
| Yea, I take myself to witness, | 70 |
| That I have loved no darkness, | |
| Sophisticated no truth, | |
| Nursed no delusion, | |
| Allow’d no fear! | |
| |
| And therefore, O ye elements, I know— | 75 |
| Ye know it too—it hath been granted me | |
| Not to die wholly, not to be all enslav’d. | |
| I feel it in this hour! The numbing cloud | |
| Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free! | |
| |
| Is it but for a moment? | 80 |
| Ah, boil up, ye vapours! | |
| Leap and roar, thou sea of fire! | |
| My soul glows to meet you. | |
| Ere it flag, ere the mists | |
| Of despondency and gloom | 85 |
| Rush over it again, | |
Receive me! Save me!
(He plunges into the crater.) | |
