Legendary Abraham,
The old Chaldean wanderer,
First among these peoples came,
Cruising above them hike a star
That is in love with distances
And has through age to calmness grown,
Patient in the wilderness
And untarrying in the sown.
At last approached his setting mark.
Thence he sent his twin star out,
Isaac, to revolve alone.
For two great stars that through an age
Play in their comer of the-sky,
Separate go into the dark,
And ere they end their roundabout
One must live and one must die.
Isaac in his tutelage
Wheeled around the father light.
Then began his pilgrimage
Through another day and might,
Other peoples, other lands.
Where the father could not go
There is gone the careless son.
He can never miss lis way.
By strangers’ hands to strangers’ hands
He is carried where he will.
Free, he must the powers obey,
Serve, be served by good and ill,
Safe through all the hazards run.
All shall watch him come and go
Until his quittance he has won;
And Jacob wheels into the day.
We through the generations came
Here by a way we do not know
From the fields of Abraham,
And still the road is scarce begun.
To hazard and to danger go
The sallying generations all
Where the imperial highways run.
And our songs and legends call
The hazard and the danger good;
For our fathers understood
That danger was by hope begot
And hazard by revolving chance
Since first we drew the enormous lot.