This Thine Earth

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This Thine Earth

Sonnet

This Thine earth, deplorable and magnificent in turns swift, 
The life within that follows this fatal and exhilarating run,
Always peering over edge of cliff and ruinous parapet,
As if oath bound to ruin, to unwind all thus far ever done?

Wither courses the meteor, wherefore burns furious sun,
For whom rages the storm, the turmoil of restless waves?
Why labours thought, the heart wrung dry by passion,
The vain strung nerves and the doomed forlorn brows?

Wither Thy dawn, here are only dusks and a long night,
Punctuated by a glimmer too brief they all call as a day!
Wither Thy cycle of rise and fall and purpose done right,
Here is but a meandering refrain courseless and wry!

A strange junction is this of saving hope and hopeless despair,
Our onward sunlit path’s hint Thou must perforce declare.