I HAVE been defeated and dragged down by
pain
and worsted by
the evil world-soul of to-day.
But still I know that life is for
delight
and for
bliss
as now when
the tiny wavelets of the sea
tip the morning light on edge, and spill it with
delight
to show how
inexhaustible it is.
And life is for delight, and bliss
like now where the white sun
kisses the sea
and
plays with the wavelets like a panther playing with its
cuffing them with soft
paws,
and blows that
are caresses,
kisses
of the soft-balled paws, where the talons
are.
And life is for dread,
for doom that darkens, and the
Sunderers
that
sunder us from each other
that strip us and destroy us and break us
down
as the tall
fox-gloves and the mulleins and mallows
are torn down by dismembering
autumn
till not a
vestige is left, and bleak winter has no trace
of any such
flowers;
and yet the
roots below the blackness are intact:
the Thunderers and the Sunderers have their
term
their limit,
their thus far and no further.
Life is for kissing and for horrid strife.
Life is for the angels and the
Sunderers
Life is
for the daimons and the demons
those that put honey on our Hps, and those that
put salt.
But life is not
for the dead vanity of knowing better, nor the
blank
cold
superiority, nor silly
conceit of being immune,
nor puerility of
contradictions
like
saying snow is black, or desire is evil.
Life is for kissing and for horrid strife,
the angels and the
Sunderers.
And
perhaps in unknown Death we perhaps shall know
Oneness and poised
immunity.
But why
then should we die while we can live?
And while we live
the kissing and communing cannot
cease
nor yet the
striving and the horrid strife.