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Else could he roam on a free sunlit soil With the childlike pain-forgetting mind of beasts Or live happy, unmoved, like flowers and trees. The Might that came upon the earth to bless, Has stayed on earth to suffer and aspire. The infant laugh that rang through time is hushed: Man's natural joy of life is overcast And sorrow is his nurse of destiny. The animal's thoughtless joy is left behind, Care and reflection burden his daily walk; He has risen to greatness and to discontent, He is awake to the Invisible. Insatiate seeker, he has all to learn: He has exhausted now life's surface acts, His being's hidden realms remain to explore. He becomes a mind, he becomes a spirit and self; In his fragile tenement he grows Nature's lord. In him Matter wakes from its long obscure trance, In him earth feels the Godhead drawing near. An eyeless Power that sees no more its aim, A restless hungry energy of Will, Life cast her seed in the body's indolent mould; It woke from happy torpor a blind Force Compelling it to sense and seek and feel. In the enormous labour of the Void Perturbing with her dreams the vast routine And dead roll of a slumbering universe The mighty prisoner struggled for release. Alive with her yearning woke the inert cell, In the heart she kindled a fire of passion and need, Amid the deep calm of inanimate things Arose her great voice of toil and prayer and strife. A groping consciousness in a voiceless world, A guideless sense was given her for her road; Thought was withheld and nothing now she knew, But all the unknown was hers to feel and clasp. 
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