 | Vigil and vision |  |
106
THE GOD OF THE FUTURE.
1.
LORD, though I may not look upon thy face,Yet, in my dreams, against the Future's sky,
I see Thee throned aloft; and to the eye
Of faith and hope, defying time and space,
As in the East the unrisen sun we trace,
Thy figure fills the horizons far and nigh,
A God for those who live, not those who die,
A God of love and life and light and grace.
Thou, that shalt come, of hate and doubt and strife
To free the world and from the ages' ban
Of dole to unspell our sorrow-darkened life,
That shalt uncharm the sun and in thy train
Love to his primal empire bring again,
Hail, that shalt be whole God, because whole Man!
2.
In the old ages, men their spirit's goalWith temples builded to the zenith sought
And with their skyward flower-spikes, graven and wrought
From fret of soulless granite into soul,
Still upward strove, as knowing not Thy whole
Sweet heaven spheral, as in life is nought
Of fair and good, but to the eye of thought
The eternal symbol shows from pole to pole:
But, with Thy coming, Thou shalt cause them know
Thy heaven around and in us, not above
Our foreheads only, but our feet below,
And to our thought wings giving as a dove,
The world and all therein to us shalt show
One fane illimitable of light and love.
| Vigil and vision | |