Praise We Great Men

Praise we the Gods of Sound —
From all the hearths and homes of men, from hives
Of honey-making lives;
Praise with our music those
Who bring the morning light
To the hearts of men, those households of high
heaven! Praise

We the great Gods of Sound
Who stole the honey red, the frozen fire —
Oh, beyond all delight and all desire —
From gilded hives upon Mount Parnassus
(Hives gilded by the light), who brought to us
That fire compressed into such holy forms
As those of the gold wanderers in heaven! Praise

Those who can raise
Gold spirits of mankind from the rough ape-dust, and can show
The planetary system in the atom, and great suns
Hid in a speck of dust. Praise we the just
Who have not come to judge, but come to bless
Immortal things in our poor earthly dress
And ripen lives and rule our hearts and rhythms,
Immortal hungers in the veins and heart.

Praise be to those who sing
Green hymns of the great waters to the dry
And tearless deserts in the souls of men, until
Under the fertilization of their singing breath
Even the grayness and the dust of Death
Seem the gray pollen of the long September
heat. Oh, praise

With lion music such as that heard in the air
When the roaring golden lion that roams the heavens
Devours the dark, and multitudes and magnitudes respond
To that lion music . . . and on wings
Of music let us rise
Like velvet honey-flies
To praise the Gods of Sound with those bee murmurings

The sound of violins
And the clear sound of flutes
As round as honeyed fruits
And like the water Phoenix ever rising
For wanderers in the lonely desert sand.

Praise we these earthly Gods —
Praise with the trumpet’s purple sound,
Praise with the trumpet flower
And with that flower the long five-petaled hand
That sweeps the strings. Praise with that angel of High God, the voice!
Oh, let us still rejoice
And praise we these great men from the first hour
Of the spirit’s birth until our earthly setting

Into the night of Death.
Praise with our last breath
These earthly Gods who bring
All sounds, all faiths, delights and splendors lost
Beneath the winter’s frost
Back to the hearts, the hearths, and homes of men.

Fires on the hearth, fires in the skies, fires
in the human heart —
Praise we Great Men!