The hoarse, low voice of the years croaks on forever-and-aye:
_Change! Change! Change_! and the winters wax and wane.
The old oak dies in the forest; the acorn sprouts at its feet;
The sea gnaws on at the land; the continent crowds on the sea.
Bound to the Ixion wheel with brazen fetters of fate
Man rises up from the dust and falls to the dust again.
God washes our eyes with tears, and still they are blinded with dust:
We grope in the dark and marvel, and pray to the Power unknown--
Crying for help to the desert: not even an echo replies.
Doomed unto death like the moon, like the midget that men call man,
Wrinkled with age and agony the old Earth rolls her rounds;
Shrinking and shuddering she rolls--an atom in God's great sea--
Only an atom of dust in the infinite ocean of space.
What to him are the years who sleeps in her bosom there?
What to him is the cry wrung out of the souls of men?
_Change, Change, Change_, and the sea gnaws on at the land:
Dead Ashes, what do you care?--it breaks not the sleep of the dead.
Down into the darkness at last, Daniel,--down into the darkness at last;
Laid in the lap of our Mother, Daniel,--sleeping the dreamless sleep,--
Sleeping the sleep of the babe unborn--the pure and the perfect rest:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better if only the dead soul knew?
Up--out of the darkness at last, Daniel,--out of the darkness at last;
Into the light of the life eternal--into the sunlight of God,
Singing the song of the soul immortal freed from the fetters of flesh:
Aye, and is it not better than this fitful fever and pain?
Aye, and is it not better than sleeping the dreamless sleep?
Hark! from the reel of the spheres eternal
the freed soul answereth "_Aye_.
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