[BNP/E3, 78B – 17]

Winter Day­ -?-

With God and Christ all optimism is gone –

And the bleak soul finding itself alone

With a {…} shrinking consciousness

In the world’s void, in itself a distress

Must have the wildness and the {…} of will

Its eyes with the strong rays of truth to fill

Had recovering this: that the world is ill.

If God be gone and future life and that

Yearning for spiritual things whose secret

Might be none {…} transcendent of the world

And all that in it is {…}

[17^v]

If all that man writes, thinks, feels, knows and loves

Would be not where th’ body now {…} moves

And where the spirit lives forgetfulness –

If, earth dying, of human {…} distress

Are the songs that we made of his despair

Of Homer, Milton, {…} Shakespeare

If all be a perishable mote

What can remain to us but musing

If this all be so… But can it be?

Oh emptiness of empty horror full

Materialism that I cannot annul

Nor me, nor such, {…}

Let us not lie! If all that is must die

The world is a just crime but whose & why?

Ay, we need god, {…} Let us create a God

To curse a spirit upon.