Contrasts

Contrasts

What opposites are here! A trivial life
    Specks the huge dream of Death called Matter; intense
    In its struggle of weakness towards omnipotence,
A thinking mind starts from the unthinking strife

In the order of the electric elements.
    Immortal life breathed in that monstrous death,
    A mystery of Knowledge wore as sheath
Matter's mute nescience. Its enveloped sense

Or dumb somnambulist will obscurely reigns
    Driving the atoms in their cosmic course
    Whose huge unhearing movement serves perforce
The works of a strange blind omniscience.

The world's deep contrasts are but figures spun
Draping the unanimity of the One.