5. THE CALL TO MAN

    O Force-compelled, Pate-driven earth-born race,

    O petty adventurers in an infinite world

    And prisoners of a dwarf humanity,

    How long will you tread the circling tracks of mind

    Around your little self and petty things ?

    But not for a changeless littleness. were you meant,

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    Not for vain repetition were you built;

    Out of the Immortal's substance you were made;

    Your actions can be swift revealing steps,

    Your life a changeful mould for growing gods.

    A Seer a strong Creator, is within,

    The immaculate Grandeur broods upon your days,

    Almighty powers are shut in Nature's cells.

    A greater destiny waits you in your front:

    This transient earthly being if he wills

    Can fit his acts to a transcendent scheme.

    He who now stares at the world with ignorant eyes

    Hardly from the Inconscient's night aroused,

    That look at images and not at Truth

    Can fill those orbs with an immortal's sight.

    Yet shell the godhead grow within your hearts,

    You shell awake into the spirit's air

    And feel the breaking walls of mortal mind

    And hear the message which left life's heart dumb

    And look through Nature with sun-gazing lids;

    And blow your conch-shells at the Eternal's gate.

    Authors of earth's high change, to you it is given

    To cross the dangerous spaces of the soul

    And touch the mighty Mother stark awake

    And meet the Omnipotent in this house of mesh

    And make of life the million-bodied One."