Classic Poem

O Center of the Scheme.
Star-Flinger, Beauty-Builder, Shaping Dream!
Now as the least in all thy space I stand
An alien in a strange and lonesome land.
I lift a little voice of pygmy pain;
I hurl it out — up — down — and shall I cry in vain?
Hear thou the prayer that struggles in this song —
Let me not linger long!

I crave the boon of dying into life!
Extend a pitying knife
And let these flesh-gyves part, let me be free!
Are we not kin? Am I not part of thee?
Am I not as a ripple in a cranny of thy sea?
What part have I in sequent wretched eves.
Blear dawns, dull noons, the budding and the falling of the leaves?
Why must I drag about this chain of years,
Long rusted red with tears?
Why must I crawl when I have wings to fly?
Behold thy child — the winged one — it is I!
At times here in the dust
I lift my head, I strive to sing — I must !
The miracle of growing wraps me round!
Light! Sound!
Form! Motion! Upward yearning! Outward reaching!
A universal praying, dumb beseeching!
I feel that I am more than flesh and futile,
A being ultra-carnal, super-brutal!
I understand these growing green beseechers,
These hopeful climbers and these earnest reachers!
I understand their yearnings every one,
How each tense fibre hungers for the sun!
I lay my hand upon the sturdy weed
Whose darkling purpose burst the prison-seed
And cleft the mud and took its light and dew,
Looked up, reached out, believed in life — and grew!
I know that we are kin;
That hope is virtue and that doubt is sin;
And o'er me comes a hungering for song:
I lift my voice — I falter. Ah, the long
Dumb years, the aching nights and days!
And yet I raise
My unavailing, immelodious cry.
Thine erstwhile singing child — behold! — 'Tis I!
In this strange wretched prison of the soul
Shall I not lose my swiftness for the goal?
It seems I must
At length become too much the kin of dust.
Ah me, the fever born of hate and lust!
Ah me, the senseless unmelodic din!
Ah me, the soul-hope sick with fleshly sin!

And in my prison ancient dreams grow up
To fill with dust my cracked and thirst-betraying cup;
Dreams mantled in the purple of dead glory
That filled the aeons out of reach of human story:
Not always have I worn these dusty rags!
The purpose of my being falters, lags,
And I am sick, sick, sick to live again.
Yet not because of this poor dust-born pain
Do I cry out and grope about for thee.
I hear the far cry of my destiny
Whose meaning sings beyond the furthest sun.
I faint in these red chains, and I would 'rise and run.
O Center of the Scheme,
Star-Flinger, Beauty-Builder, Shaping Dream!