|
A silence sealed the irrevocable decree, The word of Fate that fell from heavenly lips Fixing a doom no power could ever reverse Unless heaven's will itself could change its course. Or so it seemed: yet from the silence rose One voice that questioned changeless destiny, A will that strove against the immutable Will. A mother's heart had heard the fateful speech That rang like a sanction to the call of death And came like a chill close to life and hope. Yet hope sank down like an extinguished fire. She felt the leaden inevitable hand Invade the secrecy of her guarded soul And smite with sudden pain its still content And the empire of her hard-won quietude. Awhile she fell to the level of human mind, A field of mortal grief and Nature's law; She shared, she bore the common lot of men And felt what common hearts endure in Time. Voicing earth's question to the inscrutable power The queen now turned to the still immobile seer: Assailed by the discontent in Nature's depths, Partner in the agony of dumb driven things And all the misery, all the ignorant cry, Passionate like sorrow questioning heaven she spoke. Lending her speech to the surface soul on earth She uttered the suffering in the world's dumb heart And man's revolt against his ignorant fate. "O seer, in the earth's strange twi-natured life By what pitiless adverse Necessity Or what cold freak of a Creator's will, 
|
