OGLETHORPE

Read November 14th, 1913, before the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters in joint session at Chicago, Ill.

I heard a Spirit singing as, beyond the morning winging,Its radiant form went swinging like a star:In its song prophetic voices mixed their sounds with trumpet-noises,As when, loud, the World rejoices after war.And it said:IHear me!Above the roar of cities,The clamor and conflict of trade,The frenzy and fury of commercialism,Is heard my voice, chanting, intoning.—Down the long corridors of time it comes,Bearing my message, bidding the soul of man ariseTo the realization of his dream.Now and then discords seem to intrude,And tones that are false and feeble—Beginnings of the perfect chordFrom which is evolved the ideal, the unattainable.Hear me!Ever and ever,Above the tumult of the years,The blatant cacophonies of war,The wrangling of politics,Demons and spirits of unrest,My song persists,Addressing the soulWith the urge of an astral something,Supernal,Elemental,Promethean,Instinct with an everlasting fire.IIHear me!I am the expression of the subconscious,The utterance of the intellect,The voice of mind,That stands for civilization.Out of my singing sprang, Minerva-like,Full-armed and fearless,Liberty,Subduer of tyrants, who feed on the strength of Nations.Out of my chanting arose,As Aphrodite arose from the foam of the ocean,The Dream of Spiritual Desire,Mother of Knowledge,Victor o'er Hate and Oppression,—Ancient and elemental dæmons,Who, with Ignorance and Evil, their consorts,Have ruled for eons of years.IIIHear me!Should my chanting cease,My music utterly fail you,Behold!Out of the hoary Past, most swiftly, surely,Would gather the Evils of Earth,The Hydras and Harpies, forgotten,And buried in darkness:Amorphous of form,Tyrannies and SuperstitionsTorturing body and soul:And with them,Gargoyls of dreams that groaned in the Middle Ages—Aspects of darkness and death and hollow eidolons,Cruel, inhuman,Wearing the faces and forms of all the wrongs of the world.Barbarian hordes whose shapes make hideousThe cycles of error and crime:Grendels of darkness,Devouring the manhood of Nations:Demogorgons of War and Misrule,Blackening the world with blood and the lust of destruction.Hear me!—Out of my song have grownBeauty and joy,And with themThe triumph of Reason;The confirmation of Hope,Of Faith and Endeavor:The Dream that's immortal,To whose creation Thought gives concrete form,And of which Vision makes permanent substance.IVFragmentary,Out of the Past,Down the long aisles of the Centuries,Uncertain at first and uneasy,Hesitant, harsh of expression,My song was heard,Stammering, appealing,A murmur merely:Coherent then,Singing into form,Assertive,Ecstatic,Louder, lovelier, and more insistent,Sonorous, proclaiming;Clearer and surer and stronger.Attaining expression, evermore truer and clearer:Masterful, mighty at last,Committed to conquest,And with Beauty coeval;Part of the wonder of life,The triumph of light over darkness:Taking the form of Art—Art, that is voice and vision of the soul of man.—Hear me!Confident ever,One with the Loveliness song shall evolve,My voice is become as an army of banners,Marching irresistibly forward,With the roll of the drums of attainment,The blare of the bugles of fame:Tramping, tramping, evermore advancing,Till the last redoubt of prejudice is down,And the Eagles and Fasces of LearningMake glorious the van o' the world.VThey who are deaf to my singing,Who disregard me.—Let them beware lest the splendor escape them,The glory of light that is back o' the darkness of life,And with it—The blindness of spirit o'erwhelm them.—They who reject me,Reject the gleamThat goes to the making of Beauty;And put awayThe loftier impulses of heart and of mind.They shall not possess the dream, the ideal,Of ultimate worlds,That is part of the soul that aspires;That sits with the Spirit of Thought,The radiant presence who weaves,Directed of Destiny,There in the Universe,At its infinite pattern of stars.They shall not know,Not they,The exaltations that make endurable here on the EarthThe ponderable curtain of flesh.Not they! Not they!VIHear me!I control, and direct;I wound and heal,Elevate and subdueThe vaulting energies of Man.I am part of the cosmic strain o' the Universe:I captain the thoughts that grow to deeds,Material and spiritual facts,Pointing the world to greater and nobler things.—Hear me!My dædal expression peoples the Past and PresentWith forms of ethereal thoughtThat symbolize Beauty:The Beauty expressing itself now,As Poetry,As Philosophy:As Truth and Religion now,And now,As science and Law,Vaunt couriers of Civilization.

Hear me!Above the roar of cities,The clamor and conflict of trade,The frenzy and fury of commercialism,Is heard my voice, chanting, intoning.—Down the long corridors of time it comes,Bearing my message, bidding the soul of man ariseTo the realization of his dream.Now and then discords seem to intrude,And tones that are false and feeble—Beginnings of the perfect chordFrom which is evolved the ideal, the unattainable.Hear me!Ever and ever,Above the tumult of the years,The blatant cacophonies of war,The wrangling of politics,Demons and spirits of unrest,My song persists,Addressing the soulWith the urge of an astral something,Supernal,Elemental,Promethean,Instinct with an everlasting fire.

Hear me!I am the expression of the subconscious,The utterance of the intellect,The voice of mind,That stands for civilization.Out of my singing sprang, Minerva-like,Full-armed and fearless,Liberty,Subduer of tyrants, who feed on the strength of Nations.Out of my chanting arose,As Aphrodite arose from the foam of the ocean,The Dream of Spiritual Desire,Mother of Knowledge,Victor o'er Hate and Oppression,—Ancient and elemental dæmons,Who, with Ignorance and Evil, their consorts,Have ruled for eons of years.

III

Hear me!Should my chanting cease,My music utterly fail you,Behold!Out of the hoary Past, most swiftly, surely,Would gather the Evils of Earth,The Hydras and Harpies, forgotten,And buried in darkness:Amorphous of form,Tyrannies and SuperstitionsTorturing body and soul:And with them,Gargoyls of dreams that groaned in the Middle Ages—Aspects of darkness and death and hollow eidolons,Cruel, inhuman,Wearing the faces and forms of all the wrongs of the world.Barbarian hordes whose shapes make hideousThe cycles of error and crime:Grendels of darkness,Devouring the manhood of Nations:Demogorgons of War and Misrule,Blackening the world with blood and the lust of destruction.Hear me!—Out of my song have grownBeauty and joy,And with themThe triumph of Reason;The confirmation of Hope,Of Faith and Endeavor:The Dream that's immortal,To whose creation Thought gives concrete form,And of which Vision makes permanent substance.

Fragmentary,Out of the Past,Down the long aisles of the Centuries,Uncertain at first and uneasy,Hesitant, harsh of expression,My song was heard,Stammering, appealing,A murmur merely:Coherent then,Singing into form,Assertive,Ecstatic,Louder, lovelier, and more insistent,Sonorous, proclaiming;Clearer and surer and stronger.Attaining expression, evermore truer and clearer:Masterful, mighty at last,Committed to conquest,And with Beauty coeval;Part of the wonder of life,The triumph of light over darkness:Taking the form of Art—Art, that is voice and vision of the soul of man.—Hear me!Confident ever,One with the Loveliness song shall evolve,My voice is become as an army of banners,Marching irresistibly forward,With the roll of the drums of attainment,The blare of the bugles of fame:Tramping, tramping, evermore advancing,Till the last redoubt of prejudice is down,And the Eagles and Fasces of LearningMake glorious the van o' the world.

They who are deaf to my singing,Who disregard me.—Let them beware lest the splendor escape them,The glory of light that is back o' the darkness of life,And with it—The blindness of spirit o'erwhelm them.—They who reject me,Reject the gleamThat goes to the making of Beauty;And put awayThe loftier impulses of heart and of mind.They shall not possess the dream, the ideal,Of ultimate worlds,That is part of the soul that aspires;That sits with the Spirit of Thought,The radiant presence who weaves,Directed of Destiny,There in the Universe,At its infinite pattern of stars.They shall not know,Not they,The exaltations that make endurable here on the EarthThe ponderable curtain of flesh.Not they! Not they!

Hear me!I control, and direct;I wound and heal,Elevate and subdueThe vaulting energies of Man.I am part of the cosmic strain o' the Universe:I captain the thoughts that grow to deeds,Material and spiritual facts,Pointing the world to greater and nobler things.—Hear me!My dædal expression peoples the Past and PresentWith forms of ethereal thoughtThat symbolize Beauty:The Beauty expressing itself now,As Poetry,As Philosophy:As Truth and Religion now,And now,As science and Law,Vaunt couriers of Civilization.

An Ode to be read on the laying of the foundation stone of the new Oglethorpe University, January, 1915, at Atlanta, Georgia

IAs when with oldtime passion for this LandHere once she stood, and in her pride, sent forthWorkmen on every hand,Sowing the seed of knowledge South and North,More gracious now than ever, let her rise,The splendor of a new dawn in her eyes;Grave, youngest sister of that company,That smiling wearLaurel and pineAnd wild magnolias in their flowing hair;The sisters Academe,With thoughts divine,Standing with eyes a-dream,Gazing beyond the world, into the sea,Where lie the Islands of Infinity.IINow in these stormy days of stress and strain,When Gospel seems in vain,And Christianity a dream we've lost,That once we made our boast;Now when all life is broughtFace to grim face with naught,And a condition speaking, trumpet-lipped,Of works material, leaving Beauty outOf God's economy; while, horror-dipped,Lies our buried faith, full near to perish,'Mid the high things we cherish,In these tempestuous days when, to and froThe serpent, Evil, goes and strews his wayWith dragon's teeth that playTheir part as once they did in Jason's day;And War, with menace loud,And footsteps, metal-slow,And eyes a crimson hot,Is seen, against the Heaven a burning blotOf blood and tears and woe:Now when no mortal living seems to knowWhither to turn for hope, we turn to thee,And such as thou art, asking "What's to be?"And that thou point the pathAbove Earth's hate and wrath,And Madness, stalking with his torch aglowAmid the ruins of the Nations slowCrumbling to ashes with Old Empire thereIn Europe's tiger lair.IIIA temple may'st thou be,A temple by the everlasting sea,For the high goddess, Ideality,Set like a star,Above the peaks of dark reality:Shining afarAbove the deeds of War,Within the shrine of Love, whose face men marWith Militarism,That is the prismThrough which they gaze with eyes obscured of Greed,At the white light of God's Eternity,The comfort of the world, the soul's great need,That beacons Earth indeed,Breaking its light intenseWith turmoil and suspenseAnd failing human Sense.IVFrom thee a higher CreedShall be evolved.The broken lights resolvedInto one light again, of glorious light,Between us and the Everlasting, that is God.—The all-confusing fragments, that are night,Lift up thy rodOf knowledge and from Truth's eyeballs stripThe darkness, and in armor of the Right,Bear high the standard of imperishable light!Cry out, "Awake!—I slept awhile!—Awake!Again I takeMy burden up of Truth for Jesus' sake,And stand for what he stood for, Peace and Thought,And all that's Beauty-wroughtThrough doubt and dread and ache,By which the world to good at last is brought!"VNo more with silence burdened, when the LandWas stricken by the handOf war, she rises, and assumes her standFor the Enduring; setting firm her feetOn what is blind and brute:Still holding fastWith honor to the past,Speaking a trumpet word,Which shall be heardAs an authority, no longer mute.VIAgain, yea, she shall standFor what Truth means to ManFor science and for Art and all that canMake life superior to the things that weightThe soul down, things of hateInstead of love, for which the world was planned;May she demandFaith and inspire it; Song to lead her wayAbove the crags of WrongInto the broader day;And may she standFor poets still; poets that now the LandNeeds as it never needed; such an oneAs he, large Nature's SonLanier, who with firm handHeld up her magic wandDirecting deep in music such as noneHas ever heardSuch music as a birdGives of its soul, when dying,And unconscious if it's heard.VIISo let her rise, mother of greatness still,Above all temporal ill;Invested with all old nobility,Teaching the South decision, self controlAnd strength of mind and soul;Achieving ends that shall embrace the wholeThrough deeds of heart and mind;And thereby bindIts effort to an endAnd reach its goal.VIIISo shall she winA wrestler with sin,Supremely to a place above the years,And help men riseTo what is wiseAnd true beyond their mortal finite scan—The purblind gaze of man;Aiding with introspective eyesHis soul to see a higher planOf life beyond this life; above the gyvesOf circumstance that bind him in his placeOf doubt and keep away his faceFrom what alone survives;And what assuresImmortal life to that within, that givesOf its own self,And through its giving, lives,And evermore endures.

As when with oldtime passion for this LandHere once she stood, and in her pride, sent forthWorkmen on every hand,Sowing the seed of knowledge South and North,More gracious now than ever, let her rise,The splendor of a new dawn in her eyes;Grave, youngest sister of that company,That smiling wearLaurel and pineAnd wild magnolias in their flowing hair;The sisters Academe,With thoughts divine,Standing with eyes a-dream,Gazing beyond the world, into the sea,Where lie the Islands of Infinity.

Now in these stormy days of stress and strain,When Gospel seems in vain,And Christianity a dream we've lost,That once we made our boast;Now when all life is broughtFace to grim face with naught,And a condition speaking, trumpet-lipped,Of works material, leaving Beauty outOf God's economy; while, horror-dipped,Lies our buried faith, full near to perish,'Mid the high things we cherish,In these tempestuous days when, to and froThe serpent, Evil, goes and strews his wayWith dragon's teeth that playTheir part as once they did in Jason's day;And War, with menace loud,And footsteps, metal-slow,And eyes a crimson hot,Is seen, against the Heaven a burning blotOf blood and tears and woe:Now when no mortal living seems to knowWhither to turn for hope, we turn to thee,And such as thou art, asking "What's to be?"And that thou point the pathAbove Earth's hate and wrath,And Madness, stalking with his torch aglowAmid the ruins of the Nations slowCrumbling to ashes with Old Empire thereIn Europe's tiger lair.

III

A temple may'st thou be,A temple by the everlasting sea,For the high goddess, Ideality,Set like a star,Above the peaks of dark reality:Shining afarAbove the deeds of War,Within the shrine of Love, whose face men marWith Militarism,That is the prismThrough which they gaze with eyes obscured of Greed,At the white light of God's Eternity,The comfort of the world, the soul's great need,That beacons Earth indeed,Breaking its light intenseWith turmoil and suspenseAnd failing human Sense.

From thee a higher CreedShall be evolved.The broken lights resolvedInto one light again, of glorious light,Between us and the Everlasting, that is God.—The all-confusing fragments, that are night,Lift up thy rodOf knowledge and from Truth's eyeballs stripThe darkness, and in armor of the Right,Bear high the standard of imperishable light!Cry out, "Awake!—I slept awhile!—Awake!Again I takeMy burden up of Truth for Jesus' sake,And stand for what he stood for, Peace and Thought,And all that's Beauty-wroughtThrough doubt and dread and ache,By which the world to good at last is brought!"

No more with silence burdened, when the LandWas stricken by the handOf war, she rises, and assumes her standFor the Enduring; setting firm her feetOn what is blind and brute:Still holding fastWith honor to the past,Speaking a trumpet word,Which shall be heardAs an authority, no longer mute.

Again, yea, she shall standFor what Truth means to ManFor science and for Art and all that canMake life superior to the things that weightThe soul down, things of hateInstead of love, for which the world was planned;May she demandFaith and inspire it; Song to lead her wayAbove the crags of WrongInto the broader day;And may she standFor poets still; poets that now the LandNeeds as it never needed; such an oneAs he, large Nature's SonLanier, who with firm handHeld up her magic wandDirecting deep in music such as noneHas ever heardSuch music as a birdGives of its soul, when dying,And unconscious if it's heard.

VII

So let her rise, mother of greatness still,Above all temporal ill;Invested with all old nobility,Teaching the South decision, self controlAnd strength of mind and soul;Achieving ends that shall embrace the wholeThrough deeds of heart and mind;And thereby bindIts effort to an endAnd reach its goal.

VIII

So shall she winA wrestler with sin,Supremely to a place above the years,And help men riseTo what is wiseAnd true beyond their mortal finite scan—The purblind gaze of man;Aiding with introspective eyesHis soul to see a higher planOf life beyond this life; above the gyvesOf circumstance that bind him in his placeOf doubt and keep away his faceFrom what alone survives;And what assuresImmortal life to that within, that givesOf its own self,And through its giving, lives,And evermore endures.

Life was unkind to him;All things went wrong:Fortune assigned to himMerely a song.Ever a mysteryHere to his heart;In his life's historyLove played no part.Carve on the granite,There at the end,Where all may scan it,Death was his friend.Giving him all he missedHere upon Earth—Love and the call he missedAll that was worth.

Life was unkind to him;All things went wrong:Fortune assigned to himMerely a song.

Ever a mysteryHere to his heart;In his life's historyLove played no part.

Carve on the granite,There at the end,Where all may scan it,Death was his friend.

Giving him all he missedHere upon Earth—Love and the call he missedAll that was worth.

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