Who now, 'mid warring voices loud,
Have lost the faith they held before,
Nor through the jangling of the crowd
Can hear the earlier message more.
A brute Fate vexes them, the reign
Of dumb laws, speeding onward still,
Regardless of the waste and pain,
Which all the labouring earth do fill.
They look to see the rule of Right;
They find it not, and in its stead
But slow survivals, born of Might,
And all the early Godhead dead;
They see it not, and droop and faint
And are unhappy, doubting God;
Yet every step their feet have trod
Was trodden before them by a saint.
****
Oh, doubting soul, look up, behold
The eternal heavens above thy head,
The solid earth beneath, its mould
Compacted of the unnumbered dead.
Here the eternal problems grow,
And with each day are solved and done,
When some spent life, like melting snow,
Breathes forth its essence to the sun.
As death is, life is—without end;
Wrong with right mingles, joy with pain;
Forbid two meeting streams to blend,
'Twere not more hopeless, nor more vain.
Though Death with Life, though Wrong with Right,
Are bound within the scheme of things,
Yet can our souls, on soaring wings,
Gain to a loftier purer height,
Where death is not, nor any life,
Nor right nor wrong, nor joy nor pain;
But changeless Being, lacking strife,
Doth through all change, unchanged remain.