Animula

"Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul"
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragment brilliance of the Christmases tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea,
Studies the sunlight pattern on the floor
And running stags around a silver tray;
confounds actual and fanciful
Content with play-cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.

The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day;
week by week, offends and perplexes more
With the imperatives of "is and seems"
And may or may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Enciclopedia Britannica.

Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of is own shadow, spectre in his own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.
Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power,
For Bodin, blown to pieces,
For this one who made a great fortune,
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Florest, by the broad hound slain between the yew trees,
Pray for us and at the hour of our birth.
- Thomas S. Eliot (1929)