I

Star of Achievement!
Star that arose when man first rose on the earth
And felt within him the Upward Urge of Being,
Star of the ultimate spaces of the soul, —
Wondrous is your ascension,
Wondrous your lifting up of him your chosen,
Of man above all creatures!

II

The earth was green when he came,
The earth with its myriad-teeming mountains and valleys,
The earth that brought to birth all seas and continents.
The elder slime had conceived, preparing a way.
Its womb, impregnate with the command of the Infinite,
Had given birth to the winged thing and the saurian,
To leviathan lashing the sea,
To mastodon shaking the land:
But not in these your mystic light awoke,
Not there, not there — but in bewildering man!

III

And dim was its beam, dim, primevally;
By it man hoped no more at first than to seize
And hold a rude cave in the forest,
To shape with a stone a stone for his protection,
To clothe him with a wild skin and watch with wonder
The magic of river and tree and melting mist,
Of springing storms that died in dens of thunder.
Dim was your beam — a will-o'-the-wisp that flitted
On dreams and vague desires.

Then in his need he sought to see you clearer.
Savage he was, but in the sky of his soul
You hung, a whisperer of aspirations,
From age to age leading him
With a little gain onward;
From the cave to the hut, his first home upon earth,
From enmity with all beasts to toil with some.
Savage he was, but in his vast soul-dark,
Unmeasured but by you, O shiner upon him,
He was not all forsaken.
Not left alone in the wilderness of Nature,
With naught of hope to lead his look above it.
For knowledge kindled in him to yearning power,
Whereby he learned speech, from your bright hintings,
And moulded the strange wordless winds to his musings,
And the rhythm of wild waters into Song:
Which grew too precious to trust utterly
To sounds that perished,
So into his hands, O Star, you put the stylus,
And lo, ravished, he wrote!

IV

But death was ever with him!
Oh ...! death! ...
A little while he counted suns and moons,
A little while he slipped amid the seasons,
A little while he gazed upon your glow —
And then was gone!
Whither, O star? ...

He heard you answer in him:
" Beyond — into the dwelling-place of spirits."
And by that answer once again was quickened.
For not since your first gleam, O soul-uplifter,
Had any fallen on him like to this:
From it was born worship, from it the gods.
In the Unseen they rose — impalpable,
In the place where flesh is not, nor dust that dieth,
But only the powers that make all things to be.
And with the gods came temples, towering,
And cities reigning above the restive years.
And from these cities, fixing his gaze upon you,
He set his soul's sail to cross the centuries.

V

And far has he sailed, far, by your free leading,
Though oft failing,
And oft breaking on granite shoals of folly,
As the mysteries that gave him birth could tell.
And when at length he steered by you across
The loth Atlantic,
The vast, the unsailed,
Upon the bows of mighty galleons,
He learned that the earth is rounded — and is one!

VI

And too, O fair Effulgence, that men are one —
Sprung from a universal parentage
Of pallid Dust and Spirit.
And that with hands locked round their little planet —
Locked by the bonds of awe and hope and pity,
They are only motes infinitesimally faring
Through infinite sun-spaces,
And that upon their littleness and briefness
And universal fate hangs fraternity.

VII

So close they cling together, closer, O star,
With every shedding of your radiance,
Through new soul-firmaments of vaster range.
And though they are little more than finite sparks
For ever and ever blown toward infinite dark,
And lonely save for hope of a rekindling —
They trust in you, Star of the soul's ascension,
Ever to lead them still along their way,
Through nebulous realms of the Unknowable
Toward Love and Truth, Freedom and Hope and Joy,
Toward Life's intent — in the central heaven of all!