Come, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.
  
In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.
  
By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born -- conceal'd or unconceal'd, the seed is waiting.

Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.
  
Yet again, lo! the Soul -- above all science;
For it, has History gather'd like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
  
In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it, the Real to the Ideal tends.
  
For it, the mystic evolution;
Not the right only justified -- what we call evil also justified.
  
Forth from their masks, no matter what,
From the huge, festering trunk -- from craft and guile and tears,
Health to emerge, and joy -- joy universal.
  
Out of the bulk, the morbid and the shallow,
Out of the bad majority -- the varied, countless frauds of men and States,
  
Electric, antiseptic yet -- cleaving, suffusing all,
Only the good is universal.

Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow,
An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
High in the purer, happier air.
  
From imperfection's murkiest cloud,
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of Heaven's glory.
  
To fashion's, custom's discord,
To the mad Babel-din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard,
From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.

O the blest eyes! the happy hearts!
That see -- that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth!