Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

“ Some mighty will there was, in sooth, that swayed
The misty atoms which inhabited
The barren, unillumined fields of space;
A breath, perchance, that whirled the mists apace,
And shook the heavy indolence that weighed
Upon the moveless vapors. Oh, what vast,
Resounding undulations of effect
Awoke that breath! What dizzying aeons passed
Ere yet a lichen-patch the bare rock flecked!
Thus rolls with boom of elemental strife
The ancestry e'en of the meanest life. ”

“ A fern-leaf's airy woof, a reptile's claw,
In their eternal slumber there I saw
In deftly-wrought sarcophagi of stone.
What humid tempests, from rank forests blown,
Whirled from its parent stem yon slender straw?
What scaly creature of a monstrous breed
Bore yonder web-foot through the tepid tide?
Oh, what wide vistas thronged with mighty deed
And mightier thought have here mine eyes descried!—
Come, a fraternal grasp, thou hand of stone!
The flesh that once was thine is now mine own.
V.
Sublime is life, though in beginnings base
At first enkindled. ”