No More Learning

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one's nudity, and then to be
weary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when
the clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and
feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful
wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to
destroy a sound with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then
to wash the hands when the day's work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one's best
self in a preconceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly,
to intrigue the devils artfully--and then to forget all as though
memory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be
happy sweetly, to suffer nobly--and then to empty the cup so that
tomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with
determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed
by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method.
And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are
marked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of
supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God's garden, the master-thought
of the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled
passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a
bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?








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