I love this age of energy and force,
Expectantly I greet each pregnant hour;
Emerging from the all-creative source,
Supreme with promise, imminent with power.
The strident whistle and the clanging bell,
The noise of gongs, the rush of motored things
Are but the prophet voices which foretell
A time when thought may use unfettered wings.

Too long the drudgery of earth has been
A barrier 'twixt man and his own mind.
Remove the stone, and lo! the Christ within;
For He is there, and who so seeks shall find.
The Great Inventor is the Modern Priest.
He paves the pathway to a higher goal.
Once from the grind of endless toil released
Man will explore the kingdom of his soul.

And all this restless rush, this strain and strife,
This noise and glare is but the fanfarade
That ushers in the more majestic life
Where faith shall walk with science, unafraid.
I feel the strong vibrations of the earth,
I sense the coming of an hour sublime,
And bless the star that watched above my birth
And let me live in this important time.

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
"God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep,)
"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.