The Promise

All force strives forward to work far and wide

To live and grow and ever to expand;

Yet we are checked and thwarted on each side

By the world’s flux and swept along like sand:

In this internal storm and outwward tide

We hear a promise, hard to understand:

From the compulsion that all creatures binds,

Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds.

–GOETHE, The Mysteries

~ by safrang on January 19, 2007.