V
And all that man hath felt since man hath known
Life first within him, aye, and woman too,
Conceived and manifolded in him, drew
To limitless creation, widely sown
On teaming soil o’er which his breath had blown.
Magnificently carnal, through and through.
Each taste of the green earth, the brown, he knew,
And tasted deep, and joyed, and made his own:
The boundless steppe, to which the sky bends down,
The forest where the eternal shadows sleep,
The sowing and the mowing and the frost;
The village and the pleasures of the town,
And birth and death and love, and the starred deep
Of heaven by night; and here his soul was lost!
Hesepe, 23rd May