Classic Poem

There is no truce for you. You must go on,
Stumbling, sweat-blinded, desperate, and alone.
You will have husks for bread; for bed, a stone.
You will lie cowering, nuzzled by a spawn
Of slimy terrors. Dawn will follow dawn
And bring no surcease—only a challenge, blown
From taunting distances; frost at the bone;
Snow-murk, wind-smother—and the dim trail gone.

This is your destiny. Your blood and tears
Will mark the grim way upward to the pass.
Eden you seek, or Arcady. Yet who knows?
Will the dark irony of the sullen years
Show you, at last, a stench of blind morass
And the white horror of uncharted snows?