Then said he, “The infinite Scripture
  I have read and interpreted clear,
And searching all worlds I have found not
  My sovereign or my peer. 
In what room of the palace of nature
  Resides the invisible God? 
For all her doors I have opened,
  And all her floors I have trod. 
If greater than I be her tenant,
  Let him answer my challenging call: 
Till then I admit no rival,
  But crown myself master of all.” 
And forth as that word went bruited,
  By Man unto Man were raised
Fanes of devout self-homage,
  Where he who praised was the praised;
And from vast unto vast of creation
  The new evangel ran,
And an odour of world-wide incense
  Went up from Man unto Man;
Until, on a solemn feast-day,
  When the world’s usurping lord
At a million impious altars
  His own proud image adored,
God spake as He stept from His ambush: 
  “O great in thine own conceit,
I will show thee thy source, how humble,
  Thy goal, for a god how unmeet.”

Thereat, by the word of the Maker
  The Spirit of Man was led
To a mighty peak of vision,
  Where God to His creature said: 
“Look eastward toward time’s sunrise.” 
  And, age upon age untold,
The Spirit of Man saw clearly
  The Past as a chart out-rolled,—­
Beheld his base beginnings
  In the depths of time, and his strife,
With beasts and crawling horrors
  For leave to live, when life
Meant but to slay and to procreate,
  To feed and to sleep, among
Mere mouths, voracities boundless,
  Blind lusts, desires without tongue,
And ferocities vast, fulfilling
  Their being’s malignant law,
While nature was one hunger,
  And one hate, all fangs and maw.

With that, for a single moment,
  Abashed at his own descent,
In humbleness Man’s Spirit
  At the feet of the Maker bent;
But, swifter than light, he recovered
  The stature and pose of his pride,
And, “Think not thus to shame me
  With my mean birth,” he cried. 
“This is my loftiest greatness,
  To have been born so low;
Greater than Thou the ungrowing
  Am I that for ever grow.” 
And God forbore to rebuke him,
  But answered brief and stern,
Bidding him toward time’s sunset
  His vision westward turn;
And the Spirit of Man obeying
  Beheld as a chart out-rolled
The likeness and form of the Future,
  Age upon age untold;
Beheld his own meridian,
  And beheld his dark decline,
His secular fall to nadir
  From summits of light divine,
Till at last, amid worlds exhausted,
  And bankrupt of force and fire,
’Twas his, in a torrent of darkness,
  Like a sputtering lamp to expire.