When as out of rain Suddenly lights may break, the earth was set Beneath us, and we stood and paused to see The Düssel river from a parapet Of earth and rock. Then bending curiously, As reaching, in a moment with his hand He scraped the turf and stones, pried up a key Of harder granite, and at his command, When he had made an opening, I slid And sank, down, down through the Devonian land Until with him I reached a cavern hid From every eye but ours, and where no light But from our faces was, a pyramid Of hills that walled this crypt of soundless night. Then in a mood, it seemed more fanciful, He bent again and raked, and to my sight Upheaved and held the remnant of a skull-- Gorilla's or a man's, I could not guess. Yet brutal though it was, it was a hull Too fine and large to house the nakedness Of a beast's mind. But as I looked the god Began these words: "Before the iron stress Of the north pole's dominion fell, he trod The wastes of Europe, ere the Nile was made A granary for the east, or ere the clod In Babylon or India baked was laid For hovels, this man lived. Ten thousand years Before the earliest pyramid cast its shade Upon the desolate sands this thing of fears, Lusts, hungers, lived and hunted, woke and slept, Mated, produced its kind, with hairy ears, And tiger eyes sensed all that you accept In terms of thought or vision as the proof Of immanent Power or Love. But this skull kept The intangible meaning out. This heavy roof Of brutish bone above the eyes was dead Even to lower ethers, no behoof Of seasons, stars or skies took, though they bred Suspicions, fears, or nervous glances, thought, Which silent as a lizard's shadow fled Before it graved itself, passed over, wrought No vision, only pain, which he deemed pangs Of hunger or of thirst." As you have sought The meaning of life's riddle, since it hangs In waking or in slumber just above The highest reach of prophecy, and fangs With poison of despair all moods but love, Behold its secret lettered on this brow Placed by your own! This is the word thereof: _Change and progression from the glazed slough, Where life creeps and is blind, ascending up The jungled slopes for prey till spirits bow On Calvaries with crosses, take the cup Of martyrdom for truth's sake._