SOUL OF MAN
I challenge you, O Mars, though straitly bound.
Lo! I shall break with love your ugly power.
MARS
A slave who would defy his conqueror!
Why, I did bind you with resistless chains
Long centuries ago when earth was young.
SOUL OF MAN
I have grown strong since then.
MARS
Not strong enough.
For I have wakened from my years of rest
As zealous as a child to play his game,
And you, not I, shall feel the limits of time
Grow thin and sag and break beneath your form,
Letting you fall into annihilation
Through crackling fringes of what might have been.
SOUL OF MAN
You rave, O Mars. What ravels with my weight
Would break with yours, and yet this ancient stuff,
This fibre of the human race is strong.
You have most straitly bound, who cannot slay,
That I might work the less in your long sleep,
You, drunk with blood of lovers, satiate
With rape of many women! Yet men grow
And love you less than when your sleep began....