Peoples imperial, mighty,
Masterful, challenging fate,
The tread of your cohorts shakes the hills—
_But lo! ye are not great!
Nations that swarm and murmur,
Ye are moths that flutter and climb—
Ye are whirling gnats, ye are swirling bees,
Tossed in the winds of time!_
Earth that is flushed with glory,
A marvelous world ye are!
_But lo! in the midst of a million stars
Ye are only one pale star!
A breath stirs the dark abysses….
The deeps below the deep
Are troubled and vexed … and a thousand worlds
Fall on eternal sleep!_
THE COMRADE
I
HATH not man at his noblest
An air of something more than man?—
A hint of grace immortal,
Born of his greatly daring to assist the gods
In conquering these shaggy wastes,
These desert worlds,
And planting life and order in these stars?—
So Woman at her best:
Her eyes are bright with visions and with dreams
That triumph over time;
Her plumed thought, wing for wing, is mate with
his.
II
The world rolls on from dream to dream,
And 'neath the vast impersonal revenges of its
going,
Crushed fools that cried defeat
Lie dead amid the dust they prophesied—
Ye doubters of man's larger destiny,
Ye that despair,
Look backward down the vistaed years,
And all is battle—and all victory!
Man fought, to be a man!
Through painful centuries the slow beast fought,
Blinded and baffled, fought to gain his soul;—
Wild, hairy, shag, and feared of shadows,
Yet the clouds
Made him strange signals that he puzzled o'er;—
Beast, child, and ape,
And yet the winds harped to him, and the sea
Rolled in upon his consciousness
Its tides of wonder and romance;—
Uncouth and caked with mire,
And yet the stars said something to him, and the
sun
Declared itself a god;—
The lagging cycles turned at last
The pictures into thought,
Thought flowered in soul;—
But, oh, the myriad weary years
Ere Caliban was Shakespeare's self
And Darwin's ape had Darwin's brain!—
The battling, battling, and the steep ascent,
The fight to hold the little gained,
The loss, the doubt, the shaken heart,
The stubborn, groping slow recovery!—
But looking backward toward the dim beginnings,
You that despair,
Hath he not climbed and conquered?
Look backward and all's Victory!
What coward looks forward and foresees defeat?