THE NEW WORLD
Read before the Lambda Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, June 24, 1902
Idle gods of Old Olympus—Zeus and his immortal
clan,
Grown in stature, grace and wisdom, meekly serve
the will of man.
Every elemental giant has been trained to seek and
raise
Gates of the "impossible" that lead to undiscovered
ways.
Man hath come to stranger things than ever bard
or prophet saw.
Lo, he sits in judgment on the gods and doth amend
their law.
Now reality with wonder-deed of ancient fable teems—
Fact is wrought of golden fancy from the old
Homeric dreams.
Zeus, with thought to load the fulmen gathered for
his mighty sling,
Hurls across the ocean desert as 'twere ut a pebble-fling;
Titans move the gathered harvests, push the loaded
ship and train,
Rushing swiftly 'twixt horizons, shoulder to the
hurricane.
Hermes, of the winged sandal, strides from midday
into night.
Pallas, with a nobler passion, turns the hero from
his fight.
Vulcan melts the sundered mountain into girder,
beam and frieze.
Where the mighty wheel is turning hear the groan
of Hercules.
Eyes of man, forever reaching where immensity
envails,
View the ships of God in full career with light upon
their sails.
Read the tonnage, log, and compass—measure each
magnetic chain
Fastened to the fiery engine towing in the upper
main.
Man hath searched the small infernos, narrow as a
needle's eye,
Rent the veil of littleness 'neath which unnumbered
dragons lie.
Conquered pain with halted feeling, baned the
falling House of Life,
As with breeding rats infested, ravening in bloody
strife.
Change hath shorn the distances from little unto
mighty things—
Aye, from man to God, from poor to rich, from
peasants unto kings.
Justice, keen-eyed, Saxon-hearted, scans the records
of the world,
Makes the heartless tyrant tremble when her stem
rebuke is hurled.
Thought-ways, reaching under oceans or above the
mountain height,
Drain to distant, darkened realms the ceaseless
overflow of light.
In the shortened ways of travel Charity shall seek
her goal,
Find the love her burden merits in the commerce
of the soul.
Right must rule in earth and heaven, though its
coming here be slow;
Gods must grow in grace and wisdom as the mind
of man doth grow;
Law and Prophet be forgotten, deities uprise and
fall
Till one God, one hope, one rule of life be great
enough for all.