Classic Poem

A candle suddenly pierced the night
Where our young curlyhead lay sleeping.
He woke, half dazzled by the light;
Then we saw creeping
Into the mystery of those sleep-dimmed eyes
The dawn of deep surprise,
As he beheld the draught-blown flicker leaping

He crowed and clapped his hands in extasy
And held them forth to capture
And to caress that thing of rapture.
Thereat, in the exuberance of his pleasure,
Swaying he rose and trod a rude, instinctive measure.
So, on the earthen floor
Of his primæval dwelling,
Might dance a stone-age man in Labrador.

And then, as we
Watched our light-drunken boy
And felt his gaiety upwelling,
Faintly we seemed to hear
Vibrating down the ages, wild and clear,
Reverberations of the primal joy
Our savage fathers knew when first
Into a bleak and groping world there came,
And on their bodies beat,
The power and glory of Promethean heat,
And on their spirits burst
The magic flower of flame;
And life surged half a heaven higher
As man began his awed, extatic dance
Around that new-born radiance,
His first home fire.