Then spoke the Soul to the Seeker, "Far have you followed the quest,
Out of the East I have called you unto my uttermost West;
Out of the East you have issued, forth from the Old to the New,
To gaze on the wonder accomplished, to judge of the things yet to do.
"Long have I brooded and waited over my league vista'd lands,
Waiting the slow evolution, nursing my wide scattered bands.
Men of all lands and all nations sprung from the ends of the earth—
They came to me and I fed them, asking not station or birth.
"Men from the steppes of the Russias, bearded and burdened and poor,
Sons of the Plains of the Obi and deserts of Jeti Kenoor,
Children of darkness and peril seeking the bounty I give,
Craving the right but to labour, craving the boon but to live.
"Sons of the Vede and the Danube, Wards of the Tara and Rhone,
These have I nourished and nurtured, these have I loved as my own;
Cheering them on when they wavered with visions of greatness to be,
When cities would gladden my prairie and spires rear by the sea.
"Now breaks the dawn of fulfilment, now through the mists see arise,
Splendours thy dreams have recorded, sweet to the patriot's eyes.
Lo, 'tis the vision of greatness, prophetic, soul-stirring, grand,
All that I dreamed, Master Builder, all that you hoped for or planned.
"Beaches that billow and beckon, pregnant with bounty and life,
Vistas of life giving plenty, foreign to clamour and strife,
Cities that spring as by magic, fair, full of promise, they mould,
Rising in splendour and beauty, proud in their settings of gold.
"Harbours o'erflowing with commerce where the proud galleons ride,
Weighted and straining like racers waiting the turn of the tide,
Legions of peaceful invaders, bearing no weapons that slay,
Eager, expectant, and joyful, entering under my sway.
"Behold an edifice building out of the wealth of the Earth
By the Sons that I have nurtured, by men of different birth;
Building in love and in labour by men who are undismayed
By the storm and stress of seasons, undaunted and unafraid.
"Behold an edifice rising over the land that God made,
August, eternal, majestic, reared by the ploughshare and spade,
Builded of granite and iron, of oak and gold and of steel,
A temple where all may worship, a temple where all may kneel.
"The granite, the hearts undaunted, the oak and the gold fair deeds;
The steel and the iron, girders binding the different creeds,
The floors are the throbbing heart beats of men who love my sod
And the dome, the love of country and abiding faith in God."