"Is it portless?" asked Llewellyn George, "you're leaping to a thought, And overlook a world of intimations, And hints of truth. I grant you take this race That lives to-day, and make the world a boat There is no port for us as human lives In this our life. But look, you see the race Has climbed, a mountain trail, and looks below From certain heights to-day at man the beast. We scan a half a million years of man From caves to temples, gestures, beacon fires To wireless. Call that mechanical, And power developed over tools. But here Is mystery beyond these.--What of powers, Devotions, aspirations, sacred flame Which masters nature, worships life, defies Death to obstruct it, hungers for the right, The truth, hates wrong, and by that passion wills All art, all beauty, goodness, and creates Those living waters of increasing life By which man lives, and has to-day the means Of fuller living. Here's a realm of richness, Beyond and separate from material things, Your aeroplanes or conquests. Now I put This question to you, David Barrow, what But God who is and has some end for life, And gives it meaning, though we see it not-- What is it in the heart of man which lifts, Sustains him to the truth, the harmony, The beauty say of loyalty, or truth Or art, or science? lighting lamps for men To walk by, men who hate the lamps, the hand That lights? What is this spirit, but the spirit Of Something which moves through us, to an end, And by its constancy in man made constant Proclaims an end? There's Bruno, Socrates, There's Washington who might have lost his life, Why do these men cling to the vision, hope? When neither poverty, nor jeers, nor flames, Nor cups of poison stay? Who say thereby That death is nothing, but this life of ours, Which can be shaped to truth and harmony, And rising flame of spirit, giving light, Is everything worth while, must be lived so And if not lived so, then there's death indeed, By turning from the voice that says that man Must still aspire. And why aspire if death Ends us, the scheme? And all this realm of spirit, Of love for truth and beauty, is the play Of shadows on the tomb?"