How long delays the miracle blossoming,

vermeil and gold, soft fire, flush of the dark,

aurora, and ravish of night’s mother ark

still hallow’d ‘neath her present cherishing!

The sides of night are anguish’d with this thing,

unnatural, a fear, a rending: hark,

dim mutterings; the gulfs are strain’d and stark:

dark stress, delay, distress, and vanishing.

O womb, dark womb that darkenest, what art

shall set thee free, and us? or must our heart

yet sleep in squalid snowdrifts of the dust?

Oh that all ends of the world were come on us,

and fire were close beneath earth’s stubborn crust,

and all our days were crumbling, ruinous!