Than Chaos and black Darkness, though once chiefs,
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
In form and shape compact and beautiful,
In Will, in action free, companionship,
And thousand other signs of purer life;
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads
A power more strong in beauty, born of us
And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness.
He ends with ‘this is the truth, and let it be your balm.’ The poem is a noble conception, founded on the crude cosmogony of the ancient Greeks.