Their souls never had any priority in the life of them; No background of eternity Over which they had traversed From eon to eon, Sun-system to sun-system, Planets and stars under them, Planets and stars over them; Now dwelling on immeasurable plains of azure Bigger than space, Dazzling with the super-tropical brightness Of passionate flowers without a name, In all the romance of color and beauty-- Now, in the cities celestial, Where they made their acquaintances With other souls, which had never been incarnated, But were getting themselves ready By an intuitive obedience To a well-understood authority, Which had never spoken, To take upon themselves the living form Of some red-browed, fire-eyed Mars-man, Some pale-faced, languishing son Of the Phalic planet Venus, Or wherever else it might be, In what remote star soever Quivering on shadowy battlements. Along the lines of the wilderness, Of worlds beyond worlds, These souls were to try their fortunes. Surely, no experience of this sort Ever happened unto them, Although one would like to invest them With the glory of it, for the sake of the soul. But they were, to speak truth of them, A sort of journeyman work, Not a Phidian statuary, But a first cast of man, A rude draft of him; Huge gulfs, as of dismal Tartarus, Separating him from the high-born Caucasian. He, a mere Mongolian, As good, perhaps, in his faculties, As any Jap. or Chinaman-- But not of the full-orbed brain, Star-blown, and harmonious With all sweet voices as of flutes in him, And viols, bassoons, and organs; Capable of the depths and circumferences of thought, Of sphynxine entertainments, And the dramas of life and death. A plain fellow, and a practical, With picture in him and symbol, And thus not altogether clay-made, But touched with the fire of the rainbow, And the finger of the first light, Waiting for the second and the third light, Expectant through the ages, And disappointed; Never receiving more, But going down, at last, a dark man, And a lonely, through the dark galleries Of death, and behind the curtain Where all is light.