And surely never did thine altars glance
  With purer fires than now in France;
  While, in their clear white flashes,
    Wrong’s shadow, backward cast,
  Waves cowering o’er the ashes
    Of the dead, blaspheming Past,
  O’er the shapes of fallen giants,
    His own unburied brood, 170
  Whose dead hands clench defiance
    At the overpowering Good: 
And down the happy future runs a flood
    Of prophesying light;
It shows an Earth no longer stained with blood,
Blossom and fruit where now we see the bud
    Of Brotherhood and Right.

ANTI-APIS

Praisest Law, friend?  We, too, love it much as they that love it best;
’Tis the deep, august foundation, whereon Peace and Justice rest;
On the rock primeval, hidden in the Past its bases be,
Block by block the endeavoring Ages built it up to what we see.

But dig down:  the Old unbury; thou shalt find on every stone
That each Age hath carved the symbol of what god to them was known,
Ugly shapes and brutish sometimes, but the fairest that they knew;
If their sight were dim and earthward, yet their hope and aim were true.

Surely as the unconscious needle feels the far-off loadstar draw,
So strives every gracious nature to at-one itself with law; 10
And the elder Saints and Sages laid their pious framework right
By a theocratic instinct covered from the people’s sight.

As their gods were, so their laws were; Thor the strong could reave and
  steal,
So through many a peaceful inlet tore the Norseman’s eager keel;
But a new law came when Christ came, and not blameless, as before,
Can we, paying him our lip-tithes, give our lives and faiths to Thor.

Law is holy:  ay, but what law?  Is there nothing more divine
Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? 
Is there, say you, nothing higher?  Naught, God save us! that transcends
Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? 20

Did Jehovah ask their counsel, or submit to them a plan,
Ere He filled with loves, hopes, longings, this aspiring heart of man? 
For their edict does the soul wait, ere it swing round to the pole
Of the true, the free, the God-willed, all that makes it be a soul?

Law is holy; but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole
While ye dash the Law to pieces, shatter it in life and soul;
Bearing up the Ark is lightsome, golden Apis hid within,
While we Levites share the offerings, richer by the people’s sin.

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s? yes, but tell me, if you can,
Is this superscription Caesar’s here upon our brother man? 30
Is not here some other’s image, dark and sullied though it be,
In this fellow-soul that worships, struggles Godward even as we?

It was not to such a future that the Mayflower’s prow was turned,
Not to such a faith the martyrs clung, exulting as they burned;
Not by such laws are men fashioned, earnest, simple, valiant, great
In the household virtues whereon rests the unconquerable state.