IN earliest ages on Mount Meru | |
| Stood together and talked, the Two. | |
| |
| Gazing far from the golden berg, | |
| The Dæmon spoke to the Demiurg: | |
| |
| “All is beautiful, all is true; | 5 |
| Ocean and sky with their blending blue. | |
| |
| “All that wends from its type at will | |
| Is found in some higher harmony still. | |
| |
| “Leaves deformed on the twig I see, | |
| But all meet well in the spreading tree. | 10 |
| |
| “All is beautiful, all is fit, | |
| One creature alone seems wrong in it,— | |
| |
| “The creature Man, the being accurst, | |
| Unstable, unmeeting,—the weakest and worst. | |
| |
| “All things together seem fitly grown, | 15 |
| But that monster wanders unplaced and alone.” | |
| |
| Infinite worlds at the music woke | |
| When to the Dæmon the Maker spoke; | |
| |
| “Thine is the mission with pain and strife, | |
| To labor that death may awake to life. | 20 |
| |
| “Ever denying, destroying, the fight | |
| Turns falsehood and darkness to truth and light. | |
| |
| “But all the battles thy craft e’er span | |
| Will be naught to thy strife with that creature Man, | |
| |
| “For he alone in creation’s range | 25 |
| Possesses the endless power of change. | |
| |
| “And when the tortures of change are past. | |
| He will conquer all things and thee at last.” | |
| |
| Infinite worlds at the jarring stirred, | |
| When the first-born laughter in life was heard. | 30 |
| |
| And the Dæmon laughed: “Thou hast given me skill | |
| To strengthen life with power to kill; | |
| |
| “And may I die in my own wild wrath | |
| If I force not Man to a single path! | |
| |
| “My own full power I never have seen | 35 |
| To show what agony, suffering, mean; | |
| |
| “And all my power together I ’ll draw, | |
| But Man shall walk in a single law.” | |
| |
| In later ages on Mount Meru, | |
| Again Time gazed on the fearful Two. | 40 |
| |
| Slowly the centuries ebbed away: | |
| At the foot of the Maker the Dæmon lay. | |
| |
| Adown his head the Denier bent: | |
| “I have worked in all things—my course is spent— | |
| |
| “And Man—thy creature—has conquered me | 45 |
| Forever—Vicisti, Galilæ!” | |
| |
