II
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ho hath known the pain, the old pain of earth,Or all the travail of the sea,The many ways and waves, the birthFruitless, the labour nothing worth?Who hath known, who knoweth, O gods? not we.There is none shall say he hath seen,There is none he hath known.Though he saith, Lo, a lord have I been,I have reaped and sown;I have seen the desire of mine eyes,The beginning of love,The season of kisses and sighsAnd the end thereof.I have known the ways of the sea,All the perilous ways,Strange winds have spoken with me,And the tongues of strange days.I have hewn the pine for ships;Where steeds run arow,I have seen from their bridled lipsFoam blown as the snow.With snapping of chariot-polesAnd with straining of oarsI have grazed in the race the goals,In the storm the shores;As a greave is cleft with an arrowAt the joint of the knee,I have cleft through the sea-straits narrowTo the heart of the sea.When air was smitten in sunderI have watched on highThe ways of the stars and the thunderIn the night of the sky;Where the dark brings forth light as a flower,As from lips that dissever;One abideth the space of an hour,One endureth for ever.Lo, what hath he seen or known,Of the way and the waveUnbeholden, unsailed on, unsown,From the breast to the grave? Or ever the stars were made, or skies,Grief was born, and the kinless night,Mother of gods without form or name.And light is born out of heaven and dies,And one day knows not another's light,But night is one, and her shape the same. But dumb the goddesses undergroundWait, and we hear not on earth if their feetRise, and the night wax loud with their wings;Dumb, without word or shadow of sound;And sift in scales and winnow as wheatMen's souls, and sorrow of manifold things.
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