Now in the east the morning dies,
 The full light of the splendid sun
Strikes downward on our lifted eyes
 And the long journey is begun:
  Across the shattered walls
  A voice prophetic calls,
  With tumult and with laughter
  We rise and follow after.

The modern world, immense and wide,
 Awaits us, huger than before,
With new stars swimming in the Void,
 And Science broadening evermore
  The sweep of the limitless Vast,
  The Past is dead and past;
  Yet through it all forever
  One voice is silent never.

'Mid iron wheels and planets whirled,
 The clanging city, in the street,
—The machinery of the modern world—
 His lips cry loudly and entreat,
  Like one that lifts his head
  For a second time from the dead,
  —Out of the Ages' prison
  The new Christ re-arisen!

O holy spirit—O heart of man!
 Will you not listen, turn, and bow
To that clear voice, since time began
 Loud in your ears, and louder now!
  Mankind, the Christ, retried—
  Recrowned, recrucified;
  No god for a gift God gave us,
  Mankind alone must save us.

Will you not hear him—reach your hand!—
 From factory, tenement and slum
His voice pleads vainly in the land,
 Ah, heart of man, the time has come!
  The voice of Cain that wailed
  Grew sorrowful and failed,
  But a new voice rings deeper,
  “You are your brother's keeper.”

O world, grown pitiless and grim!
 O world of men, had you but known
Your brother is your Christ, through him
 You must be saved and him alone!
  Love for his sorrows—love
  Alone can lift you above
  The pain of your misgiving,
  The doom and the horror of living.

Within ourselves we must find the light
 And in ourselves our gods to-be,
Not throned beyond the stars of night;
 Here, in America, we must see
  The love of man for man,
  The new world republican,—
  A heaven, not superhuman,
  Reborn in man and woman.

Forward—! Truth glorifies, not kills
 The ancient marvel of the soul,
Each new progression but fulfills
 That wonder,—the wheels of the world that roll
  Thundering, but proclaim
  God with a louder name;
  Science, revealing, rehearses
  But vaster universes.

Though the dark veil of dusk and doom
 You strip from off the Soul of things,
Though with new torches through the gloom
 You hunt Him on untiring wings,
  And in the starry space,
  You shall not find His face;
  A voice comes following after
  Out of the dust, with laughter.

The Vision—the Ideal—the God—
 Not anything ever may destroy.
Then let us follow, winged and shod
 With love, with courage and with joy;
  Herein alone is the truth,
  The glory and fire of youth,
  Herein all high endeavor,
  Forever and forever!