It may be Men of to-day make monstrous war, sleep, sup, Traffic, build shrines, as earliest history Records the earliest day, and that the race Is what it was in virtue, charity, And nothing better. But within this face No light shone from that realm where Hindostan, Delving in numbers, watching stars took grace And inspiration to explore the plan Of heaven and earth. And of the scheme the test Is not five thousand years, which leave the van Just where it was, but this change manifest In fifty thousand years between the mind Neanderthal's and Shelley's. Man progressed Along these years, found eyes where he was blind, Put instinct under thought, crawled from the cave, And faced the sun, till somewhere heaven's wind Mixed with the light of Lights descending, gave To mind a touch of divinity, making whole An undeveloped growth. As ships that brave Great storms at sea on masts a flaming coal From heaven catch, bear on, so man was wreathed Somewhere with lightning and became a soul. Into his nostrils purer fire was breathed Than breath of life itself, and by a leap, As lightning leaps from crag to crag, what seethed In man from the beginning broke the sleep That lay on consciousness of self, with eyes Awakened saw himself, out of the deep And wonder of the self caught the surmise Of Power beyond this world, and felt it through The flow of living. And so man shall rise From this illumination, from this clue To perfect knowledge that this Power exists, And what man is to this Power, even as you Have left Neanderthal lost in the mists And ignorance of centuries untold. What would you say if learned geologists Out of the rocks and caverns should unfold The skulls of greater races, records, books To shame us for our day, could we behold Therein our retrogression? Wonder looks In vain for these, discovers everywhere Proof of the root which darkly bends and crooks Far down and far away; a stalk more fair Upspringing finds its proof, buds on the stalk The eye may see, at last the flowering flare Of man to-day! I see the things which balk, Retard, divert, draw into sluices small, But who beholds the stream turned back to mock, Not just itself, but make equivocal A Universal Reason, Vision? No. You find no proof of this, but prodigal Proof of ascending Life!