r:
Strong fusing air and fire
Strove before the years of birth,
With awful deed and dire,
And wrought from primal chaos
Amidst the ancient night.
The seas and shores which are the earth,
And shapes of morning light.

Yea, bound in frenzied orbits,
The solar substance sped
With travail of the moon and stars,
And planets live and dead;
And wombed and birthed in anguish,
As heirs of all its toil,
Earth's vale and hill and ribs of rock,
And the rivers in her soil.

Life was formed by labor:
From out of the bubbling ooze.
By cosmic ferment molded well,
And tropic suns and dews,
With stress of chemic struggle
Were built with warding care
The potent powers of earth and sea,
And the wings of all the air.
Yea, through the mystic process
Of crystallizing form,
To green growths sprung across the land,
And bloods of cold and warm,
The vital stream of being
In flooding efforts swirled,
And beast and bird and swimming fish
Made animate the world.

Man was wrought by labor:
Fierce things of growth and might,
Where waring species hold their sway,
Keen eared and clear of sight.
Toiled in craft and cunning
And strength of ripening brain,
Till rose the form that grasped the world
And made it his domain.

Yea, with red feud and ravage
Of saber tooth and claw.
With banding of the pack for might
And filled or starving maw;
From floundering saurians welter,
Through grin and screech of ape,
Struggled the deathless seed of life
Up to human shape.

And man hath made with labor:
From his wild primal hour,
Potent with transforming deeds.
He hath wed will to power;
Through war and peace untiring,
To industry and art,
Spending the might of all his thought
And the hope of all his heart.

Yea, tried in stress of effort
And passions wise and vain,
His zeal hath gathered wisdoms seed
From fruits of joy and pain.
His millioned cities echo;
His ships have pathed the sea;
And with bent brow he toils to make
The world that yet will be.

=To the Masters=

You drive your beasts of burden forth to
drink?
You herd your oxen, each one in his stall?
You whip and goad until they heed your call?
You own, and use? Are these your cattle?
Think!
Although the while they cringe to you and
shrink.
And watch their fate in your least finger fall,
Mistake not, lest they rise and rava