[Footnote 27:  This figure has special force from the fact that Morse’s telegraph was first put in operation a few months before the writing of this poem.]

    Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
    In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
    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. 25

    Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shall stand,
    Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land? 
    Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet ’tis Truth alone is strong,
    And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng[28]
    Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong. 30

    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. 35

[Footnote 28:  Compare:—­ “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, The eternal years of God are hers.”  BRYANT.]

    Careless seems the great Avenger; history’s pages but record
    One death-grapple in the darkness ’twixt old systems and the Word;[29]
    Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—­
    Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
    Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 40

    We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,
    Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate,
    But the soul is still oracular; amid the market’s din,
    List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,—­
    “They enslave their children’s children who make compromise with sin.” 45

[Footnote 29:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”]

    Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,
    Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,
    Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,
    Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;—­
    Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?[30] 50

    Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
    Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
    Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
    Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
    And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 55