The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-07
EVOLUTION


Tell us the world early story,
Lies hidden secret unfold;
Vain is each wild speculation,
Cropping in gloom for solution,
Enough that from darkness sprang glory,
Sunrise in crimson and gold
Mounting the stream of the ages,
Up to its fountains OF mystery,
Threading its channels uncertain,
What after all, have we won?
Blank were the worlds early pages,
Buried in myth was its history,
Even when earth's misty curtain
Glowed with the light of the sun.
Still In the quarried tradition.
Still in the ce-graven story.
Still in the rock-written fable,
Idnger the throes of thy birth;
Marking thy growth and transition
Back in the centuries noary,
Legends which teach and enable
Thy children 10 know thee, Earth!
Nebulous waif Of obscurity,
On through immensely stealing,
Wandering child Of the forces,
Dropped from the matrix of night;
Fashionng thyself TO maturity,
Sphering and fusing, annealing,
Through the dark centuries courses
Drifting along to the light
Chaos all order confounding,
Yet ever silently speeding
On with instructive Illusion,
Steadily holding thy way;
Darkness primeval Astounding,
Down through the eonS unheedfng,
Still amid murky CONFUSION
laundering on to the day.
Thundered mandate through heaven,
"Iet there be light" and the vapors
Losing themselves in the ocean,
Mingled again with the deep;
Then followed morning and even,
Night liz her pale distant tapers,
Order was born OF commotion,
Earth was awakened from sleep.
Laboring in primal CESSATION,
Life IN it's forms multifarlous.
Eager to meet the suns kisses,
Leaped in her womb with delight;
Weary of long nidulation,
Up from their wallows hilarious,
Up from their darksome abysses
Swarmed the strange brood of the night
Life in fantastic variety,
Breeding and battling and dying,
Struggling for very existence,
Rending with fang and with nail;
Death never gorged with safety,
Over the massacre flying,
Blind to the light In the distance,
Deaf to the song in the gale.
Type against type for survival,
Through the long ages contending,
All for supremacy striving,
Man as the master they own;
Brute of the brutes, without rival,
Up from the conflict ascending,
Building the steps to his throne.
Fatuous child of mortality,
Swaddled in dark superstition,
Cropping thy way through obscurity.
Stumbling yet stumbling TO rise;
Casting aside animality,
Grding thySelf with ambition.
Fearlessly facing futurity,
Scaling the sleeps OF the skies.
Race against race for dominion,
Greed against creed for conviction,
Throne against throne for subVerSi0n,
Moving like puppets at play;
Battling 10 force an opinion,
Bleeding to follow fiction,
Dying with instant reversion,
To mingle again in the fray.
Many a crimson libation
Poured on barbarian affairs
Preer and faster than water,
Puppies thy triumph with shame;
Many lurid oblation
Smoking to priest-prated psalters.
Many monster of slaughter
Fiddling kingdom to fame.
Many a Moloch Of cruelty,
Many a tophet internal.
Hope after CORY baptism
Flung 10 the funeral pyre;
But with death scorning credulity
Pluming its pinions eternal,
Up from the murderous abysm
Springing like phenix from fire.
Dross OF the brute disappearing,
Lost in the burning purgation,
Leaving the spirit less weighted,
Less overwhelmed with clay;
On to the light ever faring,
Toiling in endless graduation,
Lower to higher translated,
Rising from darkness to day.
Many a sacred Thermopylae
Hurting defiance at slavery;
Many a crucified martyr
Dying for love of his kind:
Tyranny, kingcraft, monopoly
Yielding to justice and bravery,
Liberty's blood-blaZoned charter
Many a despot hath signed.
Many a conquest OF science
Shaming the warriors saber,
Many a triumph of morals,
Wisdom and Mercy and Love;
Many a blade Of defiance
Forged to the plowshare OF labor,
Many a chaplet of laurels
Wreathed with the olive above.
Height after height thou hast taken,
Yet are there others remaining;
Far in the blue empyrean
Truths shining battIements rise.
Scale them with courage mistaken,
Death and disaster disdaining,
Hail them with jubilant pecan,
Capture the gates OF the skies.
Then shall all ills of mortality
Unto thy wisdom surrender;
knowledge, supreme and superna1,
Leaving no summit to scale.
Truth. in her white robed reality,
Opening her portals of splendor,
Yielding her treasures eternal,
Lifting futuritys veil.