Classic Poem

We dead! awake!
Kiss the beloved past good-by,
Go leave the love-house of the betrayed self,
And through the dark of birth go and enter the soul's bleak weather. . . .
And I, I will not stay dead, though the dead cling to me.
I will put away the kisses and the soft embraces and the walls that encompass me,
And out of this womb I will surely move to the world of my spirit.
I will lose my life to find it, as of old,
Yea! I will turn from the life-lie I lived to the truth I was wrought for;
And I will take the creator within, sower of the seed of the race,
And make him a god, shaper of civilizations. . . .

Now on my soul's imperious surge,
Taking the risk, as of death, and in deepening twilight,
I ride on the darkening flood and go out on the waters
Till over the tide comes music, till over the tide the breath
Of the song of my far off soul is wafted and blown,
Murmuring commandments. . . .

Oh, Life, of which I am part; Life, from the depths of the heavens,
That ascended like a water-spring into David of Asia on the eastern hills in the night,
That came like a noose of golden shadow on Joan in the orchard,
That gathers all life: the binding of brothers into sheaves;
That of old kneelers in the dust
Named, glorying: Allah, Jehovah, God.