Edgar Lee Masters

From “Canticle of the Race”

HOW beautiful is the human spirit

In its vase of clay!

It takes no thought of the chary dole

Of the light of day.

It labors and loves as it were a soul

Whom the gods repay

With length of life and a golden goal

At the end of the way.

There are souls I know who arch a dome,

And tunnel a hill.

They chisel in marble and fashion in chrome,

And measure the sky.

They find the good and destroy the ill,

And they bend and ply

The laws of nature out of a will

While the fates deny.

I wonder and worship the human spirit

When I behold

Numbers and symbols, and how they reach

Through steel and gold;

A harp, a battle-ship, thought and speech,

And an hour foretold.

It ponders its nature to turn and teach,

And itself to mould.

The human spirit is God, no doubt,

In flesh made the word:

Jesus, Beethoven and Raphael,

And the souls who heard

Beyond the rim of the world the swell

Of an ocean stirred

By a Power on the waters inscrutable.

There are souls who gird

Their loins in faith that the world is well,

In a faith unblurred.

How beautiful is the human spirit—

The flesh made the word!