Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit. They tell us that discord, though discord, alone, Can be harmony when the notes properly fit: Am I judging all things from a single false tone? Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls From devils to angels? I’m blind with the sight. It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls! I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night. EARTH AND MAN. I. On her great venture, Man, Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast Which is his well of strength, his home of rest, And fair to scan. II. More aid than that embrace, That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart Involves his fate; and she who urged the start Abides the race. III. For he is in the lists Contentious with the elements, whose dower First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour If he desists. IV. His breath of instant thirst Is warning of a creature matched with strife, To meet it as a bride, or let fall life On life’s accursed. V. No longer forth he bounds The lusty animal, afield to roam, But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome Strange themes propounds. VI. By hunger sharply sped To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use, In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews, An infant’s head. VII. And ever that old task Of reading what he is and whence he came, Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame Across her mask. VIII. She hears his wailful prayer, When now to the Invisible he raves To rend him from her, now his mother craves Her calm, her care. IX. The thing that shudders most Within him is the burden of his cry. Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye The eyeless Ghost. X. Or sometimes she will seem Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white, Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight, With gold-buds dim. XI. Once worshipped Prime of Powers, She still was the Implacable: as a beast, She struck him down and dragged him from the feast She crowned with flowers. XII. Her pomp of glorious hues, Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile With symbol-clues. XIII. The mystery she holds For him, inveterately he strains to see, And sight of his obtuseness is the key Among those folds. XIV. He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed. She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need, Not his desire. XV. She prompts him to rejoice, Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud. He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed A wanton’s choice. XVI. Albeit thereof he has found Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain; Has half transferred the battle to his brain, From bloody ground; XVII. He will not read her good, Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures; Through that old devil of the thousand lures, Through that dense hood: