ENORMITY
CONSIDERING the cold profundity of space, The million light-years star revolves from star, Travelling immutable before time was, Aeons before a stirring in the primal slime ; Considering time and space on scales so vast, Unthinkable, that the rowelled mind Baulks and runs out before so huge a task ; Considering even so homely an immensity as Sun and Moon And such a stellar fragment as this Earth, Its hills, its rocks, its creeping waters ; Considering mankind, its miseries, its idiot happiness, Its momentary life, its altogether pitifulness ; Considering all this, my tired mind rests on you. On you—one trifling creature in so intolerably great A system as to be less than nothing '(For Nothing is a living entity, an integer of space).
Yet how enchanting, how greatly lovely are you, Tranquil amidst the reeling, soaring, rushing, Predestined vagaries of all the worlds.
And I—another such an one—I love you.
Why, and to what end, I do not guess,
I am afraid to wonder. Yet we-love—I you, you me:
We do dare, in all this shifting, sliding universe, To hold our love the one, the only Fact. Too blind, too inward-eyed, to see that life Requires from us a bio-chemic urge, and that our love Is phantasy to sugar-coat this rank, this after-tasting pill.
But even when we see, after our poor, thin phantasy's been stripped aside,
We have one consolation, one support—
The farthest world, the vastest star, wheeling On the outer edge of emptiness, is bound, like us, By that same unseen Rule.
So comfort, comfort you, my love. PETER COCHRANE.
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