Religion is Ascension. 'Tis the flights

Of souls to summits of the true and wise.

One, witnessing the generations rise,

Sees them a shine at countless, different heights,

Where they, responding to their inner lights,

Glow, like the clouds at morn, with graded dyes.

If summits, there are depths; if virtue, vice;

Hence, 'tis life's rise from falls, that judgment sights.

Witnessed, or not, there is no age, nor climb,

But souls arise as bloom, where earth is treed;

As warm, red rays, where cold from mountaining need;

As burst and spread of planets, where dark crime;

Nay, rise to poise above the star's top speed

To God, like larks, in praise for life and time.