PER ASPERA, a poem

THANK God, a man can grow!
     He is not bound
With earthward gaze to creep along the ground:
Though his beginnings be but poor and low,
Thank God, a man can grow!
The fire upon his altars may burn dim,
     The torch he lighted may in darkness fail,
     And nothing to rekindle it avail,—
Yet high beyond his dull horizon's rim,
Arcturus and the Pleiads beckon him.

"Per Aspera" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Atlantic Monthly (December 1906) and in Poems (1916) Volume I.