Few;--but how their lustre thrives
On the million broken lives!
Splendid, over dark and doubt,
For a million souls gone out!
These, the holders of our hoard,--
Wilt thou not accept them, Lord?
V
Oh in the wakening thunders of the heart,
--The small lost Eden, troubled through the night,
Sounds there not now,--forboded and apart,
Some voice and sword of light?
Some voice and portent of a dawn to break?--
Searching like God, the ruinous human shard
Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make,
And Man himself hath marred?
It sounds!--And may the anguish of that birth
Seize on the world; and may all shelters fail,
Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth
Through the rent Temple-vail!
When the high-tides that threaten near and far
To sweep away our guilt before the sky,--
Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star,
Cleanse, and o'ewhelm, and cry!
Cry, from the deep of world-accusing waves,
With longing more than all since Light began,
Above the nations,--underneath the graves,--
'Give back the Singing Man!'
NOTES
=and it was good=:--Genesis, 1:31: "And God saw all that he had made,
and, behold, it was very good."
=the ancient threat of deserts=:--Isaiah, 35:1-2: "The desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose."
=after his laboring=:--Luke, 10:7, and 1st Timothy, 5:18: "The laborer
is worthy of his hire.
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