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With that, for a single moment,
Abashed at his own descent,
In humbleness Man’s Spirit
At the feet of the Maker bent;
But, swifter than light, he recovered
The stature and pose of his pride,
And, “Think not thus to shame me
With my mean birth,” he cried.
“This is my loftiest greatness,
To have been born so low;
Greater than Thou the ungrowing
Am I that for ever grow.”
And God forbore to rebuke him,
But answered brief and stern,
Bidding him toward time’s sunset
His vision westward turn;
And the Spirit of Man obeying
Beheld as a chart out-rolled
The likeness and form of the Future,
Age upon age untold;
Beheld his own meridian,
And beheld his dark decline,
His secular fall to nadir
From summits of light divine,
Till at last, amid worlds exhausted,
And bankrupt of force and fire,
‘Twas his, in a torrent of darkness,
Like a sputtering lamp to expire.

Then a war of shame and anger
Did the realm of his soul divide;
“‘Tis false, ’tis a lying vision,”
In the face of his God he cried.
“Thou thinkest to daunt me with shadows;
Not such as Thou feign’st is my doom:
From glory to rise unto glory
Is mine, who have risen from gloom.
I doubt if Thou knew’st at my making
How near to thy throne I should climb,
O’er the mountainous slopes of the ages
And the conquered peaks of time.
Nor shall I look backward nor rest me
Till the uttermost heights I have trod,
And am equalled with Thee or above Thee,
The mate or the master of God.”

Ev’n thus Man turned from the Maker,
With thundered defiance wild,
And God with a terrible silence
Reproved the speech of His child.
And man returned to his labours,
And stiffened the neck of his will;
And the aeons still went rolling,
And his power was crescent still.
But yet there remained to conquer
One foe, and the greatest–although
Despoiled of his ancient terrors,
At heart, as of old, a foe–
Unmaker of all, and renewer,
Who winnows the world with his wing,
The Lord of Death, the undying,
Ev’n Asrael the King.

And lo, Man mustered his forces
The war of wars to wage,
And with storm and thunder of onset
Did the foe of foes engage,
And the Lord of Death, the undying,
Was beset and harried sore,
In his immemorial fastness
At night’s aboriginal core.
And during years a thousand
Man leaguered his enemy’s hold,
While nature was one deep tremor,
And the heart of the world waxed cold,
Till the phantom battlements wavered,
And the ghostly fortress fell,
And Man with shadowy fetters
Bound fast great Asrael.

So, to each star in the heavens,
The exultant word was blown,
The annunciation tremendous,
Death is overthrown!
And Space in her ultimate borders
Prolonging the jubilant tone,
With hollow ingeminations,
Sighed, Death is overthrown!
And God in His house of silence,
Where He dwelleth aloof, alone,
Paused in His tasks to hearken:
Death is overthrown!

Then a solemn and high thanksgiving
By Man unto Man was sung,
In his temples of self-adoration,
With his own multitudinous tongue;
And he said to his Soul: “Rejoice thou
For thy last great foe lies bound,
Ev’n Asrael the Unmaker,
Unmade, disarmed, discrowned.”

And behold, his Soul rejoiced not,
The breath of whose being was strife,
For life with nothing to vanquish
Seemed but the shadow of life.
No goal invited and promised
And divinely provocative shone;
And Fear having fled, her sister,
Blest Hope, in her train was gone;
And the coping and crown of achievement
Was hell than defeat more dire–
The torment of all-things-compassed,
The plague of nought-to-desire;
And Man the invincible queller,
Man with his foot on his foes,
In boundless satiety hungred,
Restless from utter repose,
Victor of nature, victor
Of the prince of the powers of the air,
By mighty weariness vanquished,
And crowned with august despair.

Then, at his dreadful zenith,
He cried unto God: “O Thou
Whom of old in my days of striving
Methought I needed not,–now,
In this my abject glory,
My hopeless and helpless might,
Hearken and cheer and succour!”
And God from His lonely height,
From eternity’s passionless summits,
On suppliant Man looked down,
And His brow waxed human with pity,
Belying its awful crown.
“Thy richest possession,” He answered,
“Blest Hope, will I restore,
And the infinite wealth of weakness
Which was thy strength of yore;
And I will arouse from slumber,
In his hold where bound he lies,
Thine enemy most benefic;–
O Asrael, hear and rise!”

And a sound like the heart of nature
Riven and cloven and torn,
Announced, to the ear universal,
Undying Death new-born.
Sublime he rose in his fetters,
And shook the chains aside
Ev’n as some mortal sleeper
‘Mid forests in autumntide
Rises and shakes off lightly
The leaves that lightly fell
On his limbs and his hair unheeded
While as yet he slumbered well.

And Deity paused and hearkened,
Then turned to the undivine,
Saying, “O Man, My creature,
Thy lot was more blest than Mine.
I taste not delight of seeking,
Nor the boon of longing know.
There is but one joy transcendent,
And I hoard it not but bestow.
I hoard it not nor have tasted,
But freely I gave it to thee–
The joy of most glorious striving,
Which dieth in victory.”
Thus, to the Soul of the Dreamer,
This Dream out of darkness flew,
Through the horn or the ivory portal,
But he wist not which of the two.