The Light-Giver
By George Sterling
"Let there be light!" said One.
And from the ancient gulf of darkness strode,
Harnessed and swift for their immortal road,
The horses of the sun.
And you are child of Him,
Great Edison, for whose creative hands
The night is less on all the seas and lands,
And day itself less dim.
At evening from this hill
Gaze forth, and see the stars that you have lit—
The human constellations that transmit
The message of man's will.
Not Babylon nor Tyre
Might mock the lights of Heaven with lamps like these,
Above whose radiance the Pleiades
Float with unheeded fire.
Over the earth's vast verge
On London now a double darkness lies;
But here below unapprehended skies
What tides of splendor surge!
Your war is on the night:
Shadow by shadow we escape its reign,
As from the holy seed within your brain
The world is sown with light.
Let not your battle cease!
Another Night remains, nor till its sway
Ends in the morning of a vaster Day
Shall men have perfect peace.
Star after new-born star
Dispels that gloom of ignorance and crime;
Their glory greatens on the brows of Time;
The dawn is not so far.
The huge frontiers of night
Dissolve around a liberated land-
Pierced by the deathless ray within your hand,
O Captain of the Light !
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