Of old, each with a helmet on his head,

Practiced their inconclusive feud

Upon no battlefield of unfeeling dew—

But on the prostrate stillness of the multitude!

Even their knightliest prowess they must rear,

Tamerlane, Alexander, Arthur, every king,

Upon the common clay from which they spring.

For see how slaves, on whom war falls, renew

The strength of war and disappear

Year after year

Into the earth—fulfilling it to form and bear

Democracy!

Look nearer now along the modern sky

And watch where every man fastens the electric wing

Upon his foot, that he may leave his little sod

Of ignorance!

And look where, by and by,

Taking his high inheritance,

He knows himself and other men as the winged self of God!

The times are gone when only few were fit

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