Gloria Mundi
The West, wide-eyed, alert, intrepid, young, With rush of shuttles and the song of steam;
The East, that, lotus-eating, gropes among The half-remembered fragments of her dream.
From minarets the muezzins call to prayer,
From violins the mad mazurkas rise, And western rangers watch in wonder, where
The camel boy his listless lash applies : And nations warring, or that late have warred,
Their feuds forgot, their battles under ban, Proclaim above the clamor of the sword
The paean of the mastery of man.
Man ! Born to grovel in a squalid cave,
Whose hand it is that every door unbars, Whose cables cleave three thousand miles of wave,
Whose lenses tear their secrets from the stars ! Man ! Naked, dull, unarmed, barbaric, dumb,
What magic path is this that he had trod? Through what refining furnace hath he come,
This demi-brute become a demi-god?
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