As yonder City vivifies
Her setting rare of plain and skies
And glorious past both, the whole scene lies—
So, world-wide, Man and Nature win fresh worth
Through one another, and new power confer,
The while, in union, both create and share,
Past either mighty, and past either fair,
The life of the whole Earth!
Ay, Nature’s cool, serene
Yellow and blue and green,
Cunningly wove and wed
With Man’s hot orange and red,
Cloud-purple, indigo—
And lo! the ladder of the Earth’s rainbow:
Her treble and his bass in true accord,
The Earth-Song joins the music of the spheres:
Her consciousness and his conjoined to one,
The Cosmic Poem hears
The syllables twain of Earth’s required Word:
Her life and his life in one living whole,
And Earth through Spirit as through space shines on
A Star, a Soul!
Yet O! what join’d them? Could the mere Stardust
Compose itself to unity so just,
And such begetting Harmony beget?
Then in its deadness must
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