Life! is it sweet no more? the same blue sky
    Arches the woods; the green earth, filled with trees,
  Glories with song, happy it knows not why,
    Painted with flowers, and warm with murmurous bees;
  This earth, this golden home,
    Where men, like unto gods, were wont to dwell,
  Was all this builded, with the stars for dome,
    For man to make it hell?

  Was it for this life blossomed with fair arts,
    That for some paltry leagues of stolen land,
  Or some poor squabble of contending marts,
    Murder shall smudge out with its reeking hand
  Man’s faith and fanes alike;
    And man be man no more—­but a brute brain,
  A primal horror mailed and fanged to strike,
    And bring the Dark again?

  Fool of the Ages! fitfully wise in vain;
    Surely the heavens shall laugh!—­the long long climb
  Up to the stars, to dash him down again! 
    And all the travail of slow-moving Time
  And birth of radiant wings,
    A dream of pain, an agony for naught! 
  Highest and lowest of created things,
    Man, the proud fool of thought.

  THE LONG PURPOSES OF GOD

  To Man in haste, flushed with impatient dreams
    Of some great thing to do, so slowly done,
  The long delay of Time all idle seems,
    Idle the lordly leisure of the sun;
  So splendid his design, so brief his span,
    For all the faith with which his heart is burning,
  He marvels, as he builds each shining plan,
    That heaven’s wheel should be so long in turning,
  And God more slow in righteousness than Man.

  Evil on evil mock him all about,
    And all the forces of embattled wrong,
  There are so many devils to cast out—­
    Save God be with him, how shall Man be strong? 
  With his own heart at war, to weakness prone,
    And all the honeyed ways of joyous sinning,
  How in this welter shall he hold his own,
    And, single-handed, e’er have hopes of winning? 
  How shall he fight God’s battle all alone?

  He hath no lightnings in his puny hand,
    Nor starry servitors to work his will,
  Only his soul and his strong purpose planned,
    His dream of goodness and his hate of ill;
  He, but a handful of the eddying dust,
    At the wind’s fancy shaped, from nowhere blowing;
  A moment man—­then, with another gust,
    A formless vapour into nowhere going,
  Even as he dreams back into darkness thrust.

  O so at least it seems—­if life were his
    A little longer! grant him thrice his years,
  And God should see a better world than this,
    Pure for the foul, and laughter for the tears: 
  So fierce a flame to burn the dross away
    Dreams in his spark of life so swiftly fleeing: 
  If Man can do so much in one short day,
    O strange it seems that an Eternal Being
  Should in his purposes so long delay.