“The dawn was loud with thunders, white with levin, Walled by the whirlwind, dark with agèd wrong; Then came the bright steps of the Lyric Seven, And heights and depths grew resonant with song. “Above the dead the circling music sprang— Dead custom, dead religion, dead desire; Down the keen wind of dawn the rapture rang, White with new dream and shot with Shelley’s fire. “Out of the whirlwind Truth that came on France, Rose the young Titaness, Democracy, Superb in gesture, with the godlike glance; Now stirred, now still with dream of things to be. “She drew all faces as a lighted tower, Strong mother of men, molded of lion race; And all men’s hearts were shaken by her power, The strange, disturbing beauty of her face. “New seeing came upon the eyes of men, New life ran pulsing in the veins of Earth: It was a sifting of the souls again, The weighing of the ages and their worth. II “Man burst the chains that his own hands had made; Hurled down the blind, fierce gods that in blind years He fashioned, and a power upon them laid To bruise his heart and shake his soul with fears. “He peered through nature, peered into the past, Careless of hoary precedent and pact; And sworn to know the truth of things at last, Knelt at the altar of the Naked Fact. “One mighty gleam, and old horizons broke! All the vast, glimmering outline of the Whole Swam on the vision, shifting, at one stroke, The ancient gravitation of the soul. “All things came circling in one cosmic dance, One motion older than the ages are; Swung by one Law, one Purpose, one Advance, Serene and steadfast as the morning star. “And now men trace the orbits of the Law, And find it is their shelter and their friend; For there, behind its mystery and awe, God’s sure hand presses to a blessèd end. “So man is climbing toward the Secret Vast— Up through the storm of stars, skies upon skies; And down through circling atoms, nearing fast The brink of things, beyond which Chaos lies. “Yea, in the shaping of a grain of sand, He sees the law that made the spheres to be— Sees atom-worlds spun by the Hidden Hand, To whirl about their small Alcyone. “With spell of wizard Science on his eyes, And augment on his arm, he probes through space; Or pushes back the low, unfriendly skies, To feel the wind of Saturn on his face.