So lay till lifted on a great black wing That had no mate nor flesh-apparent trunk To hamper it; with me all time had sunk Into oblivion; when I awoke The wing hung poised above two cliffs that broke The bowels of the earth in twain, and cleft The seas apart. Below, above, to left, To right, I saw what no man saw before: Earth, hell, and heaven; sinew, vein, and core. All things that swim or walk or creep or fly, All things that live and hunger, faint and die, Were made majestic then and magnified By sight so clearly purged and deified. The smallest bug that crawls was taller than A tree, the mustard seed loomed like a man. The earth that writhes eternally with pain Of birth, and woe of taking back her slain, Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight, And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight. A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light, And there a seed, racked with heroic pain, Thrust eager tentacles to sun and rain; It climbed; it died; the old love conquered me To weep the blossom it would never be. But here a bud won light; it burst and flowered Into a rose whose beauty challenged, “Coward!” There was no thing alive save only I That held life in contempt and longed to die. And still I writhed and moaned, “The curse, the curse, Than animated death, can death be worse?” “_Dark child of sorrow, mine no less, what art Of mine can make thee see and play thy part? The key to all strange things is in thy heart._” What voice was this that coursed like liquid fire Along my flesh, and turned my hair to wire? I raised my burning eyes, beheld a field All multitudinous with carnal yield, A grim ensanguined mead whereon I saw Evolve the ancient fundamental law Of tooth and talon, fist and nail and claw. There with the force of living, hostile hills Whose clash the hemmed-in vale with clamor fills, With greater din contended fierce majestic wills Of beast with beast, of man with man, in strife For love of what my heart despised, for life That unto me at dawn was now a prayer For night, at night a bloody heart-wrung tear For day again; for _this_, these groans From tangled flesh and interlockèd bones. And no thing died that did not give A testimony that it longed to live. Man, strange composite blend of brute and god, Pushed on, nor backward glanced where last he trod. He seemed to mount a misty ladder flung Pendant from a cloud, yet never gained a rung But at his feet another tugged and clung. My heart was still a pool of bitterness, Would yield nought else, nought else confess. I spoke (although no form was there To see, I knew an ear was there to hear), “Well, let them fight; they _can_ whose flesh is fair.” Crisp lightning flashed; a wave of thunder shook My wing; a pause, and then a speaking, “Look.”