Two Second Rate First Attempts

'All is misery! All is relative!'
'Yes; but your misery is only relative!'
'But even this relativity is relative!'
'Relative to the absolute.'


When the sky, singed with red, kisses the labouring deep
Transfusing its glow across spreading arcs, and nature's sleep;
When the trees seem to swoon, straining knotty cypress;
When the day is dead, and my senses are alive, nevertheless
Why be accounted more than a piece of chaff? - don't laugh
For at least it has no meddling intellect, which seeks to graft
Flesh to flesh, but without the blood, without the good –
Behold, I say, the cow chewing the cud:
Is he not, I say, untroubled by thoughts of his mortality
And therefore immortal? For man is a child of causality
Buffeted by events in toto, a prisoner of the universe
Because he is not free to be himself. Nobody, to be terse
Notices time who is reborn every minute; all is before
Young men, all is behind old men; but none know what is in store
When providence opens its door, and its bold, luminous light
Spills out on those who know, we may think, death's eternal night.