  While cities rose and blossomed into dust, While shadowy lines of kings were blown to air, What was the Purpose brooding on the world, Through the large leisure of the centuries? And what the end—failure or victory? Lo, man has laid his sceptre on the stars, And sent his spell upon the continents. The heavens confess their secrets, and the stones, Silent as God, publish their mystery. Man calls the lightning from its secret place, That he may shrink the spaces of the world, And eavesdrop at the latched Antipodes. The wild, white, smoking horses of the sea Are startled by his thunders. The World-Powers Crowd round to be the lackeys of the king. His hand has torn the veil of the Great Law, The law that was before the worlds—before The law that swings Arcturus on the North, And hurls the soul of man upon the way. But what avail, O builders of the world, Unless ye build a safety for the soul? Man has put harness on Leviathan, And hooks in his incorrigible jaws; And yet the Perils of the Street remain. Out of the whirlwind of the cities rise Lean Hunger and the Worm of Misery, The heartbreak and the cry of mortal tears. But hark, the bugles blowing on the peaks; And hark, a murmur as of many feet, The cry of captains, the divine alarm! Look! the last son of Time comes hurrying on, The strong young Titan of Democracy! With swinging step he takes the open road, In love with the winds that beat his hairy breast. He casts his eyes abroad with Jovian glance— Searches the tracks of old Tradition; scans With rebel heart the Book of Pedigree; Peers into the face of Privilege and cries, “Why are you halting in the path of man? Is it your shoulder bears the human load? Do you draw down the rains of the sweet heaven, And keep the green things growing? Back to hell!” God is descending from eternity, And all things, good and evil, build the road. Yea, down in the thick of things, the men of greed Are thumping the inhospitable clay. By wondrous toils the men without the Dream, Led onward by a something unawares, Are laying the foundations of the Dream, The Kingdom of Fraternity foretold.
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