"How long shall Man be Nature's fool?" Man cries; <br />"Be like those great, gaunt oxen, drilled and bound, <br />Inexorably driven round and round <br />To turn the water-wheel with bandaged eyes? <br />And as they trudge beneath Egyptian skies, <br />Watering the wrinkled desert's beggared ground, <br />The hoarse Sâkiyeh's lamentable sound <br />Fills all the land as with a people's sighs?" <br /> <br />Poor Brutes! Who in unconsciousness sublime, <br />Replenishing the ever-empty jars, <br />Endow the waste with palms and harvest gold: <br />And men, who move in rhythm with moving stars, <br />Should shrink to give the borrowed lives they hold: <br />Bound blindfold to the groaning wheel of Time.<br /><br />Mathilde Blind<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-s-kiyeh/
