Then the ages went by like a dream, and the shoreline emerged from the deep,
And the stars as they watched through the years saw a change on the face of the earth;
For over the blanket of sand that had covered the dead in their sleep
Great forests grew up with their green, and the sources of rivers had birth.
And here in the aftertimes, man, the white faced and smooth-handed, came by,
And he built him a city to dwell in and temples of prayer to his God;
He filled it with music and beauty, his spirit aspired to the sky,
While the dead by whose pain it was fashioned lay under the ground that he trod.
He wrenched from great Nature her secrets, the stars in their courses he named,
He weighed them and measured their orbits; he harnessed the horses of steam;