Where God to His creature said:
"Look eastward toward time's sunrise."
And, age upon age untold,
The Spirit of Man saw clearly
The Past as a chart out-rolled,--
Beheld his base beginnings
In the depths of time, and his strife,
With beasts and crawling horrors
For leave to live, when life
Meant but to slay and to procreate,
To feed and to sleep, among
Mere mouths, voracities boundless,
Blind lusts, desires without tongue,
And ferocities vast, fulfilling
Their being's malignant law,
While nature was one hunger,
And one hate, all fangs and maw.

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."