Winter that year was strange and gray.
The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse,
and morning skies had a peculiar way
of slipping cat-quick into the night.

At the point where hope and reason part,
lies the spot where madness gets a start.
Hope to make the world kinder and free -
but flowers of hope root in reality.

No peaceful bed exists for lamb and lion,
unless on some world out beyond Orion.
Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.
Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.

Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas.
All the words of men can't calm the seas.
Nature - always beneficent and cruel -
won't change for wise man or fool.

Mankind shares all Nature's imperfections,
clearly visible to casual inspections.
Resisting betterment is the human trait.
The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.

Those who would banish the sin of greed
embrace the sin of envy as their creed.
Those who seek to banish envy as well,
only draw elaborate new maps of hell.

Those with passion to change the world,
look on themselves as saints, as pearls,
and by the launching of noble endeavor,
flee dreaded introspection forever.