Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.
Backward look across the ages, and the beacon moments see
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through oblivion's sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
Careless seems the great avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;