Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LIFE, by EMILE VERHAEREN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LIFE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: To exalt thyself all life exalted deem
Last Line: That holds the trembling universe in awe.
Subject(s): Grief; Life; Love; Soul; Universe; Sorrow; Sadness


To exalt thyself all life exalted deem,
Lofty above their lives who dare aspire
Never from sin-wrought woe and quenched desire:
Reality the bitter and supreme
Distils a liquor strong enough and red
To burn the heart and the enraptured head.

Clean wheat from which all tares the tempest blew!
Flame chosen from a thousand once so bright
With legendary splendor sunk in night!
Man, set thy foot upon the real and true,
That arduous path unto a distant goal,
Unarmed but for thy lucid pride of soul!

March boldly in thy confidence and straight
At hostile circumstance with stubborn hope,
And with its harshness let thy tense will cope,
Or thy swift wisdom, or thy power to wait,
And deep within thee mark the feeling grow
Of power increasing as the bleak days go.

In love of others find thyself again
Who by that self-same fray exalted are
Toward the same future heard by all afar:
Love thou their equal heart, their equal brain
Who in the days so wild and black and brief
Suffer thy dread, thine anguish and thy grief.

And drink so deeply of this human strife --
Whether a shadow of the cosmic wars
Or golden change amid the wandering stars --
That thou feelst all the thrill and pang of life,
And from thy heart acceptest the stern law
That holds the trembling universe in awe.





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