| |
| WHEN from Eternity were separate | |
| The curdled element | |
| And gathered forces, and the world began,— | |
| The Spirit that was shut and darkly blent | |
| Within this being, did the whole distress | 5 |
| With a blind hanker after spaciousness. | |
| Into its wrestle, strictly tied up in Fate | |
| And closely natured, came like an open’d grate | |
| At last the Mind of Man, | |
| Letting the sky in, and a faculty | 10 |
| To light the cell with lost Eternity. | |
| |
| So commerce with the Infinite was regain’d: | |
| For upward grew Man’s ken | |
| And trode with founded footsteps the grievous fen | |
| Where other life festering and prone remain’d. | 15 |
| With knowledge painfully quarried and hewn fair, | |
| Platforms of lore, and many a hanging stair | |
| Of strong imagination Man has raised | |
| His Wisdom like the watch-towers of a town; | |
| That he, though fasten’d down | 20 |
| In law, be with its cruelty not amazed, | |
| But be of outer vastness greatly aware. | |
| |
| This, then, is yours: to build exultingly | |
| High, and yet more high, | |
| The knowledgeable towers above base wars | 25 |
| And sinful surges reaching up to lay | |
| Dishonouring hands upon your work, and drag | |
| From their uprightness your desires to lag | |
| Among low places with a common gait. | |
| That so Man’s mind, not conquer’d by his clay, | 30 |
| May sit above his fate, | |
| Inhabiting the purpose of the stars, | |
| And trade with his Eternity. | |
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