Ascension

When I contemplate this mine urgent race And see what paths its tireless feet have worn, In silence and essential night forlorn, To each cold peak that gives on mental space,— Each spirit-eyrie of our time and. place, It seems a Titan toiling toward the morn, With bloody feet and coronal of thorn, Hasten, O Time, that far, atoning Day Whose feet of fire shall quench the lesser lights. Yet to whose music, old ere life began And throats and harps were fashioned of the clay, The seraphim or unconjectured nights Shall hear stars chanting in the soul of man.