THE PITILESSNESS OF DESIRE
BY SHAEMAS O’SHEEL
Cease, cease, implacable desire,
Cease, cease!
The endless ways no longer, for I tire!
I who went forth mantled with morning fire
Pray now surcease
And peace—peace!
O Protean, pitiless, perilous, dread desire,
Cease, cease!
Blow not again
Your trumpet tyrannous, nor sound your lyre:
Once in their notes I heard a spirit choir;
Now only pain.
Whispers at my young soul, blood in the heart,
Limbs of the leaping goat—aye, these I had,
And spurned a myriad summits gained, to start
Down through new vales to newer hills apart;
And I was glad
To be insatiably mad
For more—more knowledge, wisdom, passion, art!
But now release
Your broken bondsman from his broken bond!
What is beyond
This, and the next horizon, and beyond
The last horizon, could not give me peace.
That I have learned at last, and therefore cease
The bloody goad and the illusory wand—
Cease, cease!
Cease, cease!
My life’s a burning arrow shot in the dark,
Fearfully arching heaven to find no mark.
Must it be always warfare, never peace?
Nay, then I ground my arms! I will not hark
The old command; so maybe you will cease.
This is the end of all; I quench the fire.
Calm of the hills, the rooted flowers and trees,
Have some right to my love, and now to these
I turn, because their service will not tire.
My staff, my scrip, my cloak into the pyre!
Yet—what high vision through the hot flame flees?