AND the Great Secret stood before me nude and said: “I am called Hope,
Venomous satirist with the eye of a babe,
Iago playing the dulcimer beneath the windows of Grief,
Giant flambeau in the hand of Satan that lights the Race down the ages to the perpetual Festal Worm.
“I am called Hope,
The trumpet-call to the Ambuscade,
Immaculate conception of the virgin womb Credulity,
Brazen Valkyrie of the Spirit who carries the corpses of the slain to the wintry palaces of the obliterated.
“I am called Hope,
The fairy godmother of Despair,
Flying feet of Dawn that you pursue down the ridges of the Night,
Scintillant larva of the livid stare, a toy balloon escaped from the hands of a child, which collapses on the frozen mountains of the Moon.
I am called Hope.”
Benjamin De Casseres.
Source: Life, March 1916, p. 486