Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1914 (Heft 47))

Old sins, old hopes, old struggles and old days
Come back to mock you for a little space.
The old hopes mock the new, upon my face,
And all new ways.
I am the many yet I am the few;
Like and unlike are side by side in me,
Changeless and varying, only I may seem
Both false and true.
I am the fruit of all that man has sowed,
I am the ground he ploughs upon his way
Thro’ time and space. Eternally today
I am the road.
I am the force that quickens all but death,
I am the death that generates the force,
I am the plowman, breathless on his course,
I am his breath.
I am the mirror of the insatiate,
I am the good, the bad, the infinite all,
In me lie the answers to each human call
For I am Fate.
I am the many and the one, the odd
As well as even. Ever in my form
God is renewed each time a man is born—
For I am God.
I am the alternating peace and strife—
I am the mirror of all man ever is—
I am the sum of all that has been his—
For I am life.
Mabel Dodge

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