Would the all-but-human serve! 
    Monsters made of stone and nerve;
    Towers to threaten and defy
    Curse or blessing of the sky;
    Shafts that blot the stars with smoke;
    Lightnings harnessed under yoke;
    Sea-things, air-things, wrought with steel,
    That may smite, and fly, and feel! 
    Oceans calling each to each;
    Hostile hearts, with kindred speech. 
    Every work that Titans can;
    Every marvel:  save a man,
    Who might rule without a sword.—­
      Is a man more precious, Lord?

    Can it be?—­Must we then
    Render back to Thee again
    Million, million wasted men? 
    Men, of flickering human breath,
    Only made for life and death?

    Ah, but see the sovereign Few,
    Highly favored, that remain! 
    These, the glorious residue,
    Of the cherished race of Cain. 
    These, the magnates of the age,
    High above the human wage,
    Who have numbered and possesst
    All the portion of the rest!

    What are all despairs and shames,
    What the mean, forgotten names
    Of the thousand more or less,
    For one surfeit of success?

    For those dullest lives we spent,
    Take these Few magnificent! 
    For that host of blotted ones,
    Take these glittering central suns. 
    Few;—­but how their lustre thrives
    On the million broken lives! 
    Splendid, over dark and doubt,
    For a million souls gone out! 
    These, the holders of our hoard,—­
      Wilt thou not accept them, Lord?

V

Oh in the wakening thunders of the heart,
—­The small lost Eden, troubled through the night,
Sounds there not now,—­forboded and apart,
Some voice and sword of light? 
Some voice and portent of a dawn to break?—­
Searching like God, the ruinous human shard
Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make,
And Man himself hath marred?

It sounds!—­And may the anguish of that birth
Seize on the world; and may all shelters fail,
Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth
Through the rent Temple-vail! 
When the high-tides that threaten near and far
To sweep away our guilt before the sky,—­
Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star,
Cleanse, and o’ewhelm, and cry!

Cry, from the deep of world-accusing waves,
With longing more than all since Light began,
Above the nations,—­underneath the graves,—­
‘Give back the Singing Man!’

NOTES

=and it was good=:—­Genesis, 1:31:  “And God saw all that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

=the ancient threat of deserts=:—­Isaiah, 35:1-2:  “The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

=after his laboring=:—­Luke, 10:7, and 1st Timothy, 5:18:  “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”