Classic Poem

You came, beloved, when the need was greatest ...
The darkness piled up on me, year on terrible year,
Until I staggered toward destruction ... you came,
Your love my only light through the final passage of darkness ...

Are we destined?
Early in my youth I knew I should have to endure everything.
I was omnivorous for all that a human being may live.
I must go the common way and the great way ...
Know the experience of being just the husband and father and fighter and man,
Know also the peak-paths of the solitary above the mass,
Share in actions, and give myself into the flesh of passionate earth,
Withdraw to the clear pure heights of the spirit where the God is a thin gold of love,
Pry loose the fastnesses of knowledge with the whetted blade of the intellect,
Drag the depths of splendid passion, give myself to others,
Fight in some great cause in public,
Burst the secret of life and lift it to my gaze,
And know Love, the great Love, the Love that most dream and only a few live.

And why?
For Art! Because I must sing this life for the future of the human race ...
It was not enough to have the Muse with me unloading the heavens through my pen ...
I must live all things: absorb into myself every darkness and light of experience:
And I must grow myself to the stature of my vision,
And the power of my art,
Until song and man were one.

Urge toward development!
If a man could be a God, that is what I wanted ...

Such natures are the worst and best: the weakest and the strongest:
They open themselves to everything, and that which in most is hidden, the mean, the servile, the demonic, the low,
Swirls loose, shows its ugliness and frailty, blots out strength ...

There were those who saw me a shaft of power:
There were those who saw me a weakling ...
There was one who saw both, and the overcoming and victory,
And you went, beloved, with me through the last black waters,
Where all is lost, and all is found ...

2

New times demand new men:
The past seems petty in the light of the task we have set ourselves ...

Since man was, he has known Nature as the inexorable asker of the sacrifice:
He has known the Gods, the demons, the spirits, the masters of men:
He has known the gigantic force which creates through him and destroys through him:
And his heroes have dared the depths to bring peace and power.

Who is the saviour? Is it God or is it Man?
It is God overcome by Man, until the divine wisdom is the servant and friend of human wisdom,
Until God and man speak as one ... then paths open,
Then songs appear, then religions are born, then arts are created ...
Then an Age spreads its mighty tableland for the march of a race ...
Then we have nations: a China, an India, an Egypt, a Greece ...

Out of the conquered Gods we make our greatness ...
But look upon the past, and behold the price of the conquest ...
Or look at the Christians keeping in with God by shunning the world, the flesh and the devil ...

No, we have set ourselves to a mightiness that shall make this earth the home of men:
It is the mightiness of that all-in-one
Where God is the instrument of man and man is the instrument of God
And in peaceful power every world of life is moved through and lived.