And hear the mighty stream of tendency Uttering, for elevation of our thought, A clear sonorous voice, inaudible To the vast multitude.

A mighty stream of tendency.

Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave.

A fire-mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell, A jellyfish and a saurian, And caves where the cavemen dwell; Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod-- Some call it Evolution, And others call it God.

If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.