Disposition

I see kin drawing breath, then holding it,

And everyone here, playing lost and found,

Withhold regret by going safe and sound,

Let all drift with glum and yet, still they sit.

Too few will attempt, blazing to summit,

Now sullen and fallen, steeped in ground,

Once so bold, now shattered and confounded,

Now trying is strain, and vain they admit.

In query is action, with old veins slit.

What provokes these two, bashfulness and burn?

To plunder a life, make fetid and bit,

With wing and claw, yet all poison-lit?

Thallium and arsenic do not earn,

Such merit to drain of disposition.