University of Virginia Library

L' HOMME MACHINE.—EGO, EGO ANIMUS.

L'homme machine.
Freewill is nothing but a poet's dream,
Or fraud of paid professors
Who sit as false assessors
And hope with straws to stay the cosmic stream;
But still the engine's piston and the wheels
Hold on their ceaseless mission,
And life by bud or fission
Or cell and spore its varied thread unreels;
There is no God, I just go blankly on
And do, as I am driven
By the first impulse given,
Just what I must, a blind automaton.

Ego, ego animus.
This heart is soaked in sunrise, and the Spring
For ever keeps it vernal,
And all the great Eternal
Shines through with dreadful overshadowing;
I cannot flee from the pursuing God
Who is in my own bosom,
And makes it fruit and blossom
As He can clothe the barest judgment rod;
I will not hide my soul in sordid pelf
Or place of earthly leaven,
I seek my kindred Heaven,
I know the awful Maker is Myself.

L'homme machine.
I am content to go yet grinding out
The daily task and measure
Of common grief or pleasure,
I feel no deathless pulse nor glorious doubt;
The universal tide flows through me still
From the same dim dumb sources,
And I obey the Forces
Which in me wreak their unknown unloved will;
There is no future and no fairer scene
In higher worlds and hidden,
I live as we are bidden,
I die a broken and ungeared machine.

Ego, ego animus.
In this broad world I have a final voice,
And cherish the true vision,
While with a sharp decision
I cut the darkest nodes by God-like choice;
I feel the stirring of strange wings and powers
With wells that bubble over,
And bright as light on clover
A promise vaster than old Babel's towers;
I am no clod resolved at last to dust,
I am no pinch of matter
To live an hour and chatter,
But spirit splendid though in wrack and rust.

L'homme machine.
I am but the poor product of the sum
Of many forms and factors,
Amid a thousand actors
That dance to ruin with the fife and drum;
I may not gain the profit which I plan,
When enemies of iron
In multitudes environ,
I only reap the gleanings as I can;
I am a vessel if of clay or gold,
Framed in a common fashion
And filled with froth of passion
That shall not ever pass its crumbling mould.

Ego, ego animus.
I love and feel the drawing of the tie,
Which through all time and weather
Joins heart to heart together,
I love and so I never now can die;
I think but thoughts the Father's breath inspires,
And know the farthest fancies
Of my most fond romances
Are but the echo of His grand desires;
I am because He is and He is good
And in me manifested,
As God the Woman-breasted,
The Man incarnate—in all understood.