A retroactive and preactive sense,—
Fired with our self-made theories of sin,—
We suffer, suffer, suffer—half alive,
And half with the dead scars of suffering.
Friends, how would you, perhaps, have made the world?
Would you have balanced the great forces so
Their interaction would have bred no shock?
No cosmic throes of newborn continents,
No eras of the earth-encircling rain,—
Uncounted scalding tears that fell and fell