Aliabs and salaams
     To the world’s children,—­we have grown to men! 
     We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet
     To find a virgin forest, as we lay
     The beams of our rude temple, first of all
     Must frame its doorway high enough for man
     To pass unstooping; knowing as we do
     That He who shaped us last of living forms
     Has long enough been served by creeping things,
     Reptiles that left their foot-prints in the sand
     Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone,
     And men who learned their ritual; we demand
     To know him first, then trust him and then love
     When we have found him worthy of our love,
     Tried by our own poor hearts and not before;
     He must be truer than the truest friend,
     He must be tenderer than a woman’s love,
     A father better than the best of sires;
     Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin
     Oftener than did the brother we are told,
     We-poor ill-tempered mortals-must forgive,
     Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten.

     This is the new world’s gospel:  Be ye men! 
     Try well the legends of the children’s time;
     Ye are the chosen people, God has led
     Your steps across the desert of the deep
     As now across the desert of the shore;
     Mountains are cleft before you as the sea
     Before the wandering tribe of Israel’s sons;
     Still onward rolls the thunderous caravan,
     Its coming printed on the western sky,
     A cloud by day, by night a pillared flame;
     Your prophets are a hundred unto one
     Of them of old who cried, “Thus saith the Lord”;
     They told of cities that should fall in heaps,
     But yours of mightier cities that shall rise
     Where yet the lonely fishers spread their nets,
     Where hides the fox and hoots the midnight owl;
     The tree of knowledge in your garden grows
     Not single, but at every humble door;
     Its branches lend you their immortal food,
     That fills you with the sense of what ye are,
     No servants of an altar hewed and carved
     From senseless stone by craft of human hands,
     Rabbi, or dervish, Brahmin, bishop, bonze,
     But masters of the charm with which they work
     To keep your hands from that forbidden tree!

     Ye that have tasted that divinest fruit,
     Look on this world of yours with opened eyes! 
     Ye are as gods!  Nay, makers of your gods,
     Each day ye break an image in your shrine
     And plant a fairer image where it stood
     Where is the Moloch of your fathers’ creed,
     Whose fires of torment burned for span-long babes? 
     Fit object for a tender mother’s love! 
     Why not?  It was a bargain duly made
     For these same infants through the surety’s act
     Intrusted with their