Shall the same tragedy be played anew, And the same lurid curtain drop at last On one dreaddesolation, one fierce crash Of that recoil which on its makers God Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make,

Early or late? Or shall that commonwealth

Whose potent unity and concentric force Can draw these scattered joints and parts of men

Into a whole ideal man once more, Which sucks not from its limbs the life away,

But sends its flood-tide and creates itself
Over again in every citizen,
Be there built up? For me, I have no
choice;

I might turn back to other destinies, For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors;

But whoso answers not God's earliest call

Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme
Of lying open to his genius
Which makes the wise heart certain of
its ends.

Here am I; for what end God knows, not I; Westward still points the inexorable soul:

Here am I, with no friend but the sad

sea,

The beating heart of this great enterprise, Which, without me, would stiffen in swift death;

This have I mused on, since mine eye could first

Among the stars distinguish and with

joy

Rest on that God-fed Pharos of the

north,

And not the pines alone; all sights and sounds

To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, And catered for it as the Cretan bees Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's gripe;

Then did I entertain the poet's song, My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, I heard Ulysses tell of mountainchains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The western main shook growling, and still gnawed.

I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale Of happy Atlantis, and heard Björne's keel