Why waste your time pursuing such vain dreams--
As some benighted travelers chase false lights
To lose themselves in bogs and fens at last?
But read instead in Nature's open book
How light from darkness grew by slow degrees;
How crawling worms grew into light-winged birds,
Acquiring sweetest notes and gayest plumes;
How lowly ferns grew into lofty palms;
How men have made themselves from chattering apes;[2]
How, even from protoplasm to highest bard,
Selecting and rejecting, mind has grown,
Until at length all secrets are unlocked,
And man himself now stands pre-eminent,
Maker and master of his own great self,
To sneer at all his lisping childlike past
And laugh at all his fathers had revered."
The prince with gentle earnestness replied:
"Full well I know how blindly we grope on
In doubt and fear and ignorance profound,
The wisdom of the past a book now sealed.
But why despise what ages have revered?
As some rude plowman casts on rubbish-heaps
The rusty casket that his share reveals,
Not knowing that within it are concealed
Most precious gems, to make him rich indeed,
The hand that hid them from the robber, cold,
The key that locked this rusty casket, lost.
The past was wise, else whence that wondrous tongue[3]
That we call sacred, which the learned speak,
Now passing out of use as too refined
For this rude age, too smooth for our rough tongues,
Too rich and delicate for our coarse thoughts.
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