Classic Poem

Did the Race of men descend from a Nature sublime,
From a type which is higher than man and almost divine,
Sinking from higher to lower through æons of time,
Through a hopeless decay and slow unmeasured decline?

Whence came, then, this downward force to degrade what God gave?
Can we rest in the thought that we fell from a higher estate?
Shall the work of His hand grow weaker in time and fade,
And that which was once above death, sink down to the grave?

And if we are born with the seeds of a deep decay,
Can it ever be stayed, though it were by an Infinite Will;
Or are all things fated to fade and diminish away
Through all stages of lower life till Creation lies still?

Or if power there be to stay, and willing for good,
Where then shall be set the limit of gradual shame?
Not there, maybe, where we think, nor then when we would,
And how shall our being reascend to the height whence we came?

Or shall this faith rather be ours, that the Infinite Plan
Is worked by a gradual miracle bett'ring the Race,
Since the quickening Spirit breathed on the sea's dead face,
And the faint life stirred, which one day should blossom in Man?

It were liker, indeed, to the work of an Infinite Might
To raise all the gradual Past from lower to higher;
Nay, but where, were it thus, were there room for the heaven-sent light.
That, 'midst growing darkness shining, could bid us aspire?

And what were our profit to rise from the general shame,
If we knew that the Race were doomed to a deeper decay,
Or if millions of lives that are past should wither in flame,
Nor rise from the darkness of Hell to a Heavenly day?

And does not all Nature teem, not only with types that ascend,
But with those their mysterious fates from a higher ideal degrade,
High archetypes dwindling down, which from higher to lower tend,
Keen organs, and powers of might, which to feeble energies fade?

Great Universe, what is thy Secret, what are thy Laws?
Do they dwindle through secular time by the power of an Infinite Will?
Or do all things to Perfectness tend by a changeless ordinance still,
Impelled by the upward force of an inborn Beneficent Cause?

But if such were the law of things, how then should any ignore
The self-same embryo growth of man and the lowest ape,
Which an inborn necessity moulds to such difference of being and shape,
That one rises to godlike discourse, one lies soulless for evermore?

Or shall we believe, indeed, that deep down in the covering earth,
May be found, some day, a trace of a Being that once has been,
Which in long-dead æons of time was parent of either birth,
And, in Nature's gradual scheme, stood centred and fixed between?

Can the Individual rise, though the Race sinks down in disgrace,
And, while all is ruined beside, increase to a heavenly height?
Can the Individual sink to some dark and forsaken place,
While the Race rises higher and higher in face of the Infinite Light?

Is the soul of Humanity one with the Individual soul
Shall each rise with the other or sink, as the suns are illumined or fade?
Shall the hand of the Maker show weak as the æons unchangeably roll,
Grown helpless to stay the wreck of the Cosmos itself hath made?

Nay, from out of the House of despair shall be heard a jubilant voice,
Beneath the deepest depths and hopeless abysses of Ill,
Which in cosmical accents immense, bids all things living rejoice,
And out of the pit of Hell strive onward and upward still.