Manhood

I CLAIM the right of knowing whom I serve,Else is my service idle; He that asksMy homage asks it from a reasoning soul.To crawl is not to worship; we have learnedA drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee,Hanging our prayers on hinges, till we apeThe flexures of the many-jointed worm.Asia has taught her Allahs and salaamsTo the world's children,-we have grown to men!We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feetTo find a virgin forest, as we layThe beams of our rude temple, first of allMust frame its doorway high enough for manTo pass unstooping; knowing as we doThat He who shaped us last of living formsHas long enough been served by creeping things,Reptiles that left their footprints in the sandOf old sea-margins that have turned to stone,And men who learned their ritual; we demandTo know Him first, then trust Him and then loveWhen we have found Him worthy of our love,Tried by our own poor hearts and not before;He must be truer than the truest friend,He must be tenderer than a woman's love,A father better than the best of sires;Kinder than she who bore us, though we sinOftener than did the brother we are toldWe--poor ill-tempered mortals--must forgive,Though seven times sinning threescore times andten.

This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men!Try well the legends of the children's time;Ye are the chosen people, God has ledYour steps across the desert of the deepAs now across the desert of the shore;Mountains are cleft before you as the seaBefore the wandering tribe of Israel's sons;Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan,Its coming printed on the western sky,A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame;Your prophets are a hundred unto oneOf them of old who cried, "Thus saith the Lord;"They told of cities that should fall in heaps,But yours of mightier cities that shall riseWhere yet the lonely fishers spread their nets,Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl;The tree of knowledge in your garden growsNot single, but at every humble door;Its branches lend you their immortal food,That fills you with the sense of what ye are,No servants of an altar hewed and carvedFrom senseless stone by craft of human hands,Rabbi, or dervish, brahmin, bishop, bonze,But masters of the charm with which they workTo keep your hands from that forbidden tree!

Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit,Look on this world of yours with opened eyes!Y e are as gods! Nay, makers of your gods,--Each day ye break an image in your shrineAnd plant a fairer image where it stoodWhere is the Moloch of your fathers' creed,Whose fires of torment burned for span--long babes?Fit object for a tender mother's love!Why not? It was a bargain duly madeFor these same infants through the surety's actIntrusted with their all for earth and heaven,By Him who chose their guardian, knowing wellHis fitness for the task,--this, even this,Was the true doctrine only yesterdayAs thoughts are reckoned,--and to--day you hearIn words that sound as if from human tonguesThose monstrous, uncouth horrors of the pastThat blot the blue of heaven and shame the earthAs would the saurians of the age of slime,Awaking from their stony sepulchresAnd wallowing hateful in the eye of day!