O Earth by Edna St. Vincent Millay — Read

O Earth, unhappy planet born to die, / Might I your scribe and your confessor be, / What wonders must you not relate to me

Of Man, who when his destiny was high

Strode like the sun into the middle sky

And shone an hour, and who so bright as he, / And like the sun went down into the sea, / Leaving no spark to be remembered by. But no; you have not learned in all these years

To tell the leopard and the newt apart; Man, with his singular laughter, his droll tears, / His engines and his conscience and his art, / Made but a simple sound upon your ears:

The patient beating of the animal heart.