Contemplate all this work of Time, <br /> The giant labouring in his youth; <br /> Nor dream of human love and truth, <br /> As dying Nature's earth and lime; <br /> But trust that those we call the dead <br /> Are breathers of an ampler day <br /> For ever nobler ends. They say, <br /> The solid earth whereon we tread <br /> In tracts of fluent heat began, <br /> And grew to seeming-random forms, <br /> The seeming prey of cyclic storms, <br /> Till at the last arose the man; <br /> <br /> Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime, <br /> The herald of a higher race, <br /> And of himself in higher place, <br /> If so he type this work of time <br /> <br /> Within himself, from more to more; <br /> Or, crown'd with attributes of woe <br /> Like glories, move his course, and show <br /> That life is not as idle ore, <br /> <br /> But iron dug from central gloom, <br /> And heated hot with burning fears, <br /> And dipt in baths of hissing tears, <br /> And batter'd with the shocks of doom <br /> <br /> To shape and use. Arise and fly <br /> The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; <br /> Move upward, working out the beast, <br /> And let the ape and tiger die.<br /><br />Alfred Lord Tennyson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-memoriam-a-h-h-118-contemplate-all-this-work/
