Audio

There in the heart of vain phenomenon, In an enormous action's writhen core He saw a Shape illimitable and vague Sitting on Death who swallows all things born.

As a sea nears a victim bound and still, The approach alarmed his mind for ever dumb Of an implacable eternity Of pain inhuman and intolerable.

In street and house, in councils and in courts Beings he met who looked like living men And climbed in speech upon high wings of thought But harboured all that is subhuman, vile And lower than the lowest reptile's crawl.

A new aesthesis of Inferno's art That trained the mind to love what the soul hates, Imposed allegiance on the quivering nerves And forced the unwilling body to vibrate.

A capital was there without a State: It had no ruler, only groups that strove. He saw a city of ancient Ignorance Founded upon a soil that knew not Light.

A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable, Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes Approached him armed with beauty like a snare, But hid a fatal meaning in each line And could in a moment dangerously change.

A hidden Puissance conscious of its force, A vague and lurking Presence everywhere, A contrary Doom that threatens all things made, A Death figuring as the dark seed of life, Seemed to engender and to slay the world.

There is no end of seeking and of birth, There is no end of dying and return; The life that wins its aim asks greater aims, The life that fails and dies must live again; Till it has found itself it cannot cease.

Even grief has joy hidden beneath its roots: For nothing is truly vain the One has made: In our defeated hearts God's strength survives And victory's star still lights our desperate road; Our death is made a passage to new worlds.