Bound (Rexroth)

This ego, bound by personal
Tragedy and the vast
Impersonal vindictiveness
Of the ruined and ruining world,
Pauses in this immortality,
As passionate, as apathetic,
As the lava flow that burned here once;
And stopped here; and said, "This far
And no further."  And spoke thereafter
In the simple diction of stone.

Kenneth Rexroth, from "Lyell's Hypothesis Again"