27. Thoughts Beside the River Neb

If you should in your frantic grief revile

The blows of fate, and at some godhead scream,

Not understanding the purport of death,

Concluding that in essence man is vile,

And that he lives, a shadow of a drea,

That vanishes with an expiring breath,

No further need of any domicile…

Let the gaze rest upon this winding stream

That from the sea unto its native heath

Ever must change yet ever keep its style;

And though its shallows flow at length to doom

It ever is renewed by constant springs,

And moved by primal urge it blithely sings

Loud in the sun, more loudly in the gloom.