The Heritage

How shall the present verify the past?
Like flames we strove, still onward, upward rising,
Spurning the singing continents--at last,
Wrecked on this fatal day of our devising.

Nurtured by lunar rainbows, chill and sweet,
Our fancy was a gossamer of beauty;
Now like a web it drags about our feet,
Named with the symbols drear of fact and duty.

We who were heirs to Egypt, India’s child,
Suckled by Greece, and cradled by Cathay,
How tacitly we waive this breeding wild,
Deny our parents in our deeds to-day.

Let us awake--obedient to our dreams,
Let us embrace huge issues, comprehending
The scheme entire--Great Beauty’s birth, which seems
The glorious urge for life, unchecked, unending.