Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/45

Mysterious, weaving the irrevealable,
Full of the peace of unity—sphere and its life at one—
Humming their lives of love through the limitless waste of creation.

God! thou hast made man a test of Thyself!
Thou hast set in him a heart that bleeds at the cry of the helpless:
Through Thine infinite seas one world rolls silent,
Moaning at times with quivers and fissures of blood;
Divided, unhappy, accursèd; the lower life good,
But the higher life wasted and split, like grain with a cankered root.
Is there health in thy gift of life, Almighty?
Is there grief or compassion anywhere for the poor?
If these be, there is guerdon for those who hate the wrong
And leap naked on the spears, that blood may cry
For truth to come, and pity, and Thy peace.