  When the morning came with her eyes of flame, And looked on the youthful earth; When man, at the call of the Lord of All, Rose up in his glorious birth; When the stars rang out, with a tuneful shout To the mountains and the sea, And the world’s great heart, with a quickened start, Beat time to their melody;— Ere the dawning light in the heavens grew bright, Ere the march of the hours began, God planted the seed of a mighty need, In the innermost soul of man. ’Twas the yearning wild that a little child For the fostering parent feels— A holy thought with his life inwrought, Which his simplest act reveals. The lion proud, like a servant, bowed At the might of his sovereign will; But to man alone was the sense made known Of a power that was higher still. His simple and child-like mind Could not gaze aright on that matchless light, So boundless and unconfined. Gross by birth from his mother Earth, He needed some outward sign; So the artisan planned, with a cunning hand, A form of the Great Divine. And Baal, and Allah, and Juggernaut, And Brahma, and Zeus, and Pan, Show how deeply wrought was that one great thought, In the worshiping soul of man. Then his Deity came in the morning’s flame, In the song of the sun-lit seas, In the stars at night, in the noontide light, In the woods and the murmuring breeze. To the Great Divine at the idol shrine, By each and by every name, Through the fiery death or the prayerful breath, The worship was still the same. Like a grain in the sod grew the thought of God, As Nature’s slow work appears; From the zoÖphyte small, to the “Lord of all,” Through cycles and sums of years. When the era of Truth began, And the soul was taught, through its primal thought, Of the life of God in man. Then the soul arose from her long repose, At the Truth’s awakening breath, And fearlessly trod as a child of God, Triumphant o’er Time and Death. There came a sound from the wide world round, Like the surging of the sea, Majestic and deep in its onward sweep— ’Twas the anthem of the free. Through the ages dim has that holy hymn Come down to our listening ears; And still shall it float with a sweeter note Through the vista of coming years. And a voice makes known from the viewless throne, “As it hath been, shall it be— On! on from the past! still on to the last! Like a river that seeks the sea.” “Hour by hour, like an opening flower, Shall truth after truth expand; The sun may grow pale, and the stars may fail, But the purpose of God shall stand. And altar and fane, shall fall; One bond of love, and one home above, And one faith shall be to all.” |
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