I Vowed To Love Mankind
I vowed to love mankind one night—
Beneath a wan and weeping light,
Where shadows clung to reason’s edge
And hope lay broken on a ledge.
The air was hushed with ghostly breath,
A perfume faintly sweet as death,
And through the dark, with hollow eyes,
I heard humanity’s soft cries.
“I vowed,” I said, “to thee, O race—
Though sorrow stains thy pallid face;
Though cruelty, with cunning hand,
Hath sown despair across thy land.”
Yet in that vow there stirred a dread—
A whisper from the nameless dead,
Who murmured low, “Beware the plea
To love what scorns its own decree.”
For man, I saw, in fevered dream,
Was less the light than fractured gleam;
A shattered glass of truth and grace,
Each shard reflecting a different face.
Still bowed I low—aye, lower still—
Against the rising tide of ill,
Till from the depths there came a sigh
That seemed to ask the question: Why?
Why love a form so frail, so torn,
By endless night and ceaseless scorn?
Why kneel before a fleeting breath
That dances ever close with death?
And yet—I could not turn away,
Though reason begged my soul to stray;
For in that ruin, dimly shone
A fragile light not wholly gone.
Thus vowed I long, and vow I yet—
In mournful love, in dark regret;
To mankind’s heart—so cursed, so grand—
I gave my soul… and trembling hand.
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