Classic Poem

Come, comrades, you who dream and you who dare —
Let us have utterance; let us declare.
In face of all the firmament,
This world the table whereupon we write,
The day our parchment, and our ink, the night;
Let us confer
Freely with nature. Let us ask of her
While we lay bare
Our secrets for the Plaeides to share,
What the Creator meant
When he invented longing. Nor let us quail
But ask the full intent.
And why it is mortals so often fail
Of their fulfillment; seek the roots, the cause;
Sift, weigh and measure, find the laws
That keep life innocent of age.
God surely gave us not this rage
Only to mock us for one little while
And to let skeptics say,
" Joy lasts but for a taunting hour, a day,
Then leaves life emptier than an empty smile. "

Come, heart of mine, soul of mine,
Militant, glowing, divine.
Let us stand vigorously forth, we twain,
Intrepid, robust, sane;
With all our powers of feeling and of mind
Put forth to find.
O, heart; O, soul; O, lover
Let us rediscover
The vanished secret and the abandoned hope
That lured the seekers to that highest slope
Where the faint-hearted faltered and fell back.
Let us, full fledged,
And pledged
To have the whole, bravely demand to know their lack.
Let us strike boldly out for that far trail they lost
Just at the gleaming borderland of Truth,
And — what the cost —
Pause not, nor faint, until we find
Those wild, ecstatic wishes on the wind
Blown from the apple orchards of our youth.
Why limit God's capacity for bliss
Since 'tis man's littleness makes living small;
Cuts short his rapture in one fleeting kiss,
Keeps him from knowing all
That God designed?
Come, soul, and let us find!

Come, mortals! Friends, lovers, fathers, mothers,
Daughters and sons — let us be free!
In all ways that are great and fair
Let us declare
How we shall live, how we shall love, what we shall be —
All three.
Able at last to answer back the universe in its own key,
Let us command the past and future both, nor be afraid
To live as hugely as our souls are made.
Come workers! Poets, artists, dreamers, more and more
Let us shake wide our wings and soar.
Let us not fear to answer the high call
That trumpets to us all.
Amid the doubt and chaos of to-day —
The hate, the lust, the rage,
Let us declare for nobler things —
The coming of that age
When man shall find his wings.
Above the roar of cannon and the din
Let us not fear to sound the silver horn
That ushers the new morn —
Come, comrades — let us win!