Iii

Hear me! Should my chanting cease, My music utterly fail you, Behold! Out of the hoary Past, most swiftly, surely, Would gather the Evils of Earth, The Hydras and Harpies, forgotten, And buried in darkness: Amorphous of form, Tyrannies and Superstitions Torturing body and soul: And with them, Gargoyls of dreams that groaned in the Middle Ages-- Aspects of darkness and death and hollow eidolons, Cruel, inhuman, Wearing the faces and forms of all the wrongs of the world. Barbarian hordes whose shapes make hideous The cycles of error and crime: Grendels of darkness, Devouring the manhood of Nations: Demogorgons of War and Misrule, Blackening the world with blood and the lust of destruction. Hear me!-- Out of my song have grown Beauty and joy, And with them The triumph of Reason; The confirmation of Hope, Of Faith and Endeavor: The Dream that's immortal, To whose creation Thought gives concrete form, And of which Vision makes permanent substance.