University of Virginia Library

THE ARCHETYPAL MAN.

On what historic page,
In what forgotten age,
Out of the world of night,
Rose this great Son of Light?
Did he run as the wild deer ran,
Down the slopes of Industan,
Rushing as tempests rush
Over the hills of the Hindu Kush,
Sheer into the Sacred River,
Whence none may deliver,
On, still on,
Till the last was gone,
Sunk in the Holy River?
Dropt from the peaks of Industan,
When the longest year is a span?
Not from the East,
Where life is a feast,
Nor adrift from the North,
Where Ice puts forth
From the gulf of the Boreal Sea—
What time, or Place
Produced the Race,
Forerunners of you and ME?
Dead, æons and æons ago,
Where wild winds blow,
Sifting and drifting Snow!
The caverns of France,
Where damoiselles dance,
On kitchen-middens remote,
On sunken piles,
In small Swiss isles,
Where shallops to-day still float:
Where we discover their barbèd hooks,
Which, unto scholars, are curious books,
Graven and carven of old,
With images manifold,
Writ with the primitive Pen
Of the Father of Ancient Men!
Shot headlong into the waves,
He rises in mountain caves,
Dark except for the light
Of the stalactite,
Still as the death lurking there
(Which nothing may spare),
In the sea-lion's maw,
And the bear's blunt paw,
Where the billows tumble in brine,
And many a vine
Trails hither and thither along,
Strange as the curlew's song!
There, where elk and deer,
Are scratched on the Elephant's tusk,
Where lingers the odor of musk
Like Summer all through the year!
What gods do they love or fear?
The same whereunto we bow,
Idols that baffle us now;
Not wiser now than then,
Than Thou wert, O Father of Men!