I have spun with her dervish priests;
I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts
And found love sleeping there;
I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams;
I have sunk with her dull despair;
I have sweat with her travails and cursed with her pains;
I have swelled with her foolish pride;
I have raged through a thick red mist at one with her branded Cains,
With her broken Christs have died.
O beautiful half-god city of visions and love!
O hideous half-brute city of hate!
O wholly human and baffled and passionate town!
The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight,
Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a soul,
I have known, I have felt, and been shaken thereby!
Wakened and shaken and broken,
For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb through thy rapid veins
The beat of the heart of a world.
[18]
