A BEAST'S BONY frame lies bleaching on the grass. Its dry white bonesTime's hard laughtercry to me: Thy end, proud man, is one with the end of the cattle that graze no more, for when thy life's wine is spilt to its last drop the cup is flung away in final unconcern. I cry in answer: Mine is not merely the life that pays its bed and board with its bankrupt bones, and is made destitute. Never can my mortal days contain to the full all that I have thought and felt, gained and given, listened to and uttered. Often has my mind crossed Time's border, Is it to stop at last for ever at the boundary of crumbling bones? Flesh and blood can never be the measure of the truth that is myself; the days and moments cannot wear it out with their passing kicks; the wayside bandit, Dust, dares not rob it of all its possessions. Death, I refuse to accept from thee that I am nothing but a gigantic jest of God, a blank annihilation built with all the wealth of the Infinite.
A RAY OF morning sun strikes aslant at the door. The assembled crowd feel in their blood the primaeval chant of creation: 'Mother, open the gate!' The gate opens. The mother is seated on a straw bed with the babe on her lap, Like the dawn with the morning star. The sun's ray that was waiting at the door outside falls on the head of the child. The poet strikes his lute and sings out: 'Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.' They kneel down,the king and the beggar, the saint and the sinner, the wise and the fool,and cry: 'Victory to Man, the new-born, the ever-living.' The old man from the East murmurs to himself: 'I have seen!'
