By Heaven! it is a shameful thing
That, in this age of deepening might,
There live so few whose souls dare cling
Forever to the right!
By Heaven! it is a crying sin
That, in this hour of ripening thought,
Where so much greatness lies within,
So little is outwrought.

The world is full of puling fools
Who prate of love in sickening rhymes,
Or bring stale tomes of trusty rules
To curb the chafing times;
But where be they whose prophet-souls
Outlooking on life's Ocean waves,
Do warn us of the rocks and shoals
Which else become our graves?

What care we for our father's creed?
What reck we of the ancient themes?
Is Truth less true in newer deeds
Than in decrepit dreams?
All honor to our brave old Sires—
The unforgotten, worthy dead;
Yet shall our loftier desires
Be on their dulness fed?

Give us new Truth altho' it break
Upon us with the lightning's flash!
Give us new Truth! The Nations quake
Beneath the shifting crash.
Give us new Truth! Our souls despise
This blinding rush of deadly strife.
Past forms of Truth are present lies
Which canker all our life.

Therefore, new Truth! And let it burst
Like red-hot thunderbolts on those
In whom this fair world stands a curse
With such a hell of woes!
New Truth! Which ever more shall right
Earth's wronged and patient multitude;
And robe us all in rare delight
Of deep and earnest good.

Who but has seen
Once in his life, when youth and health ran high,
The fair, clear face of truth
Grow dark to his eye?
Who but has known
Cold mists of doubt and icy questionings
Creep round him like a nightmare, blotting out
The sight of better things.

A hopeless hour,
When all the voices of the soul are dumb,
When o'er the tossing seas
No light may come,
When God and right
Are gone, and seated on the empty throne
Are dull philosophies and words of wind,
Making His praise their own.

Better than this,
The burning sins of youth, the greed of age,
Than thus to live inane;
To sit and read,
And with blind brain
Daily to treasure up a deadly doubt,
And live a life from which the light has fled,
And faith's pure fire gone out.

Until at last,
For some blest souls, but never here for all,
Burns out a sudden light,
And breaks the thrall,
And doubt has fled,
And the soul rises, with a clearer sight
For this its pain, its sorrow, its despair,
To God and truth and right.

Plead we for those
Gently and humbly, as befitteth men
On whom the same chill shade
Broods now as then.
So shall they learn
How an eternal wisdom rules above,
And all the cords of Being are gathered up
In an unfailing love.