Discontent

From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, January 20, 1915.

Formed of the elemental fierce unrest
That seethes forever in the human breast,
Coeval with the race of Man am I.
I seem a curse from which he fain would fly;
And in his efforts to escape from me
He pits his might against Immensity,
And bends the laws of Nature to his will;
Yet I shall goad him ever on until
He solve the problem of Infinity
And read the meaning of life’s mystery.
Then when he rests on heights as yet untrod,
And learns that he himself is part of God,
He’ll know that I first taught him to aspire—
That I, the Curse, impelled him from the mire.