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Impelled to seek the spiritual Pole,
Ideal lodestar of the pilgrim soul!

What meaneth, then, this horrible array?
Abortions seizing hard breath for a day
When they have mangled, mad with famine-rages,
Foul mates through dark interminable ages,
Loathsome with low lust, anguish, desolation!
Until awakes Man's mournful generation
From the colossal ruin of lost life;
And lo! his infinite, opening eyes are rife
With hunger for eternal days, and good,
Piteously craved as necessary food!
Reveal from whence the holy hunger comes!
For all the mute onlookers turn their thumbs
Doomward around the immense arena spaces,
As Man, the victim, peers in their dread faces,
Implacable, though all the beauty-flower
Of the young gladiator plead with power!
Say, whence this thirst for truth and righteousness,
If there be no eternal Spring to bless,
No Arm to quell the tyrant, or redress
Mad earth's injustice? Myriadfold we grovel,
A human swine on palace floor, and hovel,
Bound by a Circe, albeit half aware
We are fallen gods in some sublime despair!

O monstrous Nature! human-headed Beast,