The hopelessness of him who cried Vanity of Vanities Was justified, But now no longer must abide. Failure was his, and failure filled the hours Of our fathers in the past--let it depart. Triumph is come, and triumph must be ours. The archangels of earth through Israel, Through India and Greece Shall find us wings for life and for increase Of living, and shall battle down the hell Whose fires still smolder and profane. Life and the human heart In living must become the aeroplane, Not the yoked oxen and the cart. Let but the thought of East and West be blent, Europe, America, the Orient, To give life wings as Time's last great event: The final glory of wings to the soul of man In an order of life human, but divine, Fashioned in carefulest thought, powerful but of delicate design, As the wings of the aeroplane are. Where spirit of man is used to the full, but saved, As the petrol demon, in this dragon of war, Uses and saves his power. Where neither thought, truth, love nor gifts, nor any flower Of spirit of man, so mangled or enslaved In the eras gone, is wasted or depraved. Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised With winning of his wings. Dust he no more shall eat, Who crawls not, but from feet Has risen to wings! Man shall no longer python be. These wings are prophecies of a world made free! Man shall no longer crawl, the curse is raised. He has soared to the gate of heaven and gazed Into the meadows of infinity, Winged and with lightning shod, Beyond the old day's lowering cloud and murk. The heavens declare the glory of God, Man shows His handiwork! OH YOU SABBATARIANS! Oh you sabbatarians, methodists and puritans; You bigots, devotees and ranters; You formalists, pietists and fanatics, Teetotalers and hydropots, You thin ascetics, androgynous souls, Chaste and epicene spirits, Eyes blind to color, ears deaf to sound, Fingers insensitive, Do what you will, Make what laws you choose-- Yet there are high spaces of rapture Which you can never touch, They are beyond you and hidden from you. We leave you to the dull assemblies, Charades, cantatas and lectures; The civic meetings where you lie and act And work up business; The teas of forced conversation, And receptions of how-de-dos, And stereotyped smiles; The church sociables; And the calls your young men of clammy hands And fetid breath Pay to anæmic virgins--