But remember—(should discouragement seek to dog your steps)— every great structure requires the process of time. "The giant trees of California were once puny saplings. The slow lapse of time has drawn nature into their mighty hearts." Just as surely as the absorption of natural forces built the giant redwoods, just as surely can you draw upon nature for GIANT POWERS.
The Fire.
In ancient myth, Prometheus
Filched fire from the altars of the gods
To warm the world,
Incurring Jove's dread wrath
And endless torment.
Lo, mind,—inflamed by the vision:
Of victim and the torturing bird,
Of black vindictiveness and suffering Will,
Rived forever, yet for aye supreme,—
Heroizes the deed and soul
And wreaks on canvas and in drama high
Its passionate admiration.
Now, too, in palace and hut confronted,
In battleship and iron steed defying space,
In flaring furnace of the smelted ore,
In haunts of coal and steam below the whirling wheels,
Life laughs and sings and thunders
An oratorio merging all the powers of harmony,
And hails the high-born Thief,
As giver of ethereal fire.
The atomic thrill waits also the clear call
To lift dull bodies till the joy of flesh
Becomes a common luxury;—
To vibrate rhythmically swift
Through all the responsive cells of thought
Till a man might solemnly hold
All things are possible on the bursting earth;—
To energize the mystic self
With consciousness of life deific
Till the whole world, jubilant, should flame
With its glory, actual, concrete, the one sure Truth
Of a rock-girt globe, or a sun-filled space.
—THE AUTHOR.
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH LESSON—The Four Pyramids.
This equation's writ
In every scene:
The end shall fit—
As extremes to mean—
Whatever's forerunner to it.
—THE AUTHOR.
PRINCIPLE—The best use of self demands that it be understood.
Our ideal specimen of human nature is the whole man at his best.