University of Virginia Library

Lose the last faith of all, and die indeed—
Keep that, and thou may'st live! When all the rest
Has faded like thy breath upon a mirror,
When all the thrones of all the gods have fallen,
When God Himself remains not even a Name,
Gaze in the faces of thy fellow-men
For one last comfort. If those faces seem
Vacant and foul, if all Humanity
Assumes the blackness of thine own despair,
So that thou echoest the preacher's cry
That Man is base as any Drunkard's dream,
Turn round into the darkness, veil thy face,
For thou art lost to all Eternity!

Now, when the Heavens are empty and no sign
Comes from the Eternal Silence, loudly still
The blind priest raves, and all the slaves of God
Shriek their approval! ‘Man,’ they cry, ‘is evil,
Yea, canker'd thro' and thro' with Sin's disease,
And cruelty, the aftermath of Sin;
In the beginning God stretched out a Hand
To heal him, but he thrust the Hand away
And hid his evil face in dust of lust,
And so is lost for ever, save for grace
Of Him he hath offended!’ Lie of lies!
Yet how the hordes of madmen echo it,
Not knowing that they curse themselves and God,
Cursing the only thing that Death and Time
Spare and preserve Divine. In this dark world
What moves my wonder most is, not that Man
Is so accurst and warp'd from heavenly love,
But that, despite the pitfalls round his feet,
He falls into so few,—despite the hate
And anarchy of Nature, echoed on
In his own heart-beats, he can love so much!
He stumbles, being blind; he eateth dust,
Being fashion'd out of dust; flesh, he pursues
The instincts of the flesh; but evermore
He, struggling upward from the slough of shame,
Confronts the Power which made him miserable
And stands erect in love, a living Soul!

Doubt that, doubt all. I tell you I have walk'd
For many a weary year these wastes of woe,
And found beneath the shining of the sun
No creature wholly evil; nay, I have seen
Ev'n in the very dregs and filth of Sin
A power, a patience, and a gentleness
That put ev'n gods to shame. 'Twas long my custom
To haunt the byways of great Towns by night,
Seeking for Souls,—and chiefly for the Souls
Of outcast women. (Man may save himself;
The world is not so leagued against mere Man,
But Woman is bound down a million-fold
By blinded generations, led alas!
By the Semitic Christ.) I have stood for hours
Watching the gin-shop's bloodshot eyeballs flash,
Or with an aching hunger following
The shadows on the window of the brothel
In hope to catch some glimmering of a waif
Whose message was to me. God gave to me
This gift,—to know at once, to recognise
Instantly, in a face-flash, as it were,
The creature I can help. All night my foot
Has troubled the dead silence of the slums,
Oft broken by the drunken mother's shriek,
The dull sound of a blow, a body's fall;
And when the cry of ‘Murther’ hath arisen,
My eyes have been the first to see, my hand
The first to raise, the bleeding mother's form,
The children's slaughter'd clay. My place has been
Under lone scaffolds in the dim grey dawn,
Watching Man's murderers lead forth to death
The poor sick wretch with haggard eyes and knees
That knock together; and my wrath hath risen
In protestation deeper, if less loud,
Than the thief's laughter and the rowdy's oath
Beside me. I have wander'd like a ghost
Down shrouded walls of hideous Hospitals,
Following my quest from bloody bed to bed,
Each desecrated to man's cruelty
And feminine corruption. I have seen
Such sorrow, such destruction, such despair,
That in the atmosphere these things exhaled
Reason hath totter'd, lost its throne, and swoon'd;
I know all sins woman or man can sin,
I know all viper-nests where such sins breed,
I mark the Tree of Evil root and branch,
And from the darkest bough that grows thereon
My hands have pluckt some precious human fruit;
My hands have gather'd flowers of heavenly light
And loveliness, that God, if God there be,
Will never leave to die.

Then, quit the depths,
And climb the heights, of Life—what gracious flowers
Are growing gladly there! what deeds of grace
Attest the power and privilege of Love
To elude Heaven's cruelty and Life's caprice
And grow divine indeed!

Here rests my faith,
The last fond faith of all: not far away
In the void Heavens up yonder, not on creeds
Upbuilded 'mid the ever-shifting sands,
Not in the Temples of God's sycophants,
But here, among our fellows, down as deep
As the last rung of Hell!—So once again
I say my wonder is, not at Man's sin,
But at his patience and beneficence!
How bravely, cheerfully, he bears the load
Nature hath left upon him! With what courage
He strangles one by one the snakes surrounding
His cradle and his grave! how brightly, gladly,
He takes the little blessings as they come
And seeks with happy eyes the little Ligh!
Hate Man, and o, thou hatest, losest God;
Keep faith in Man, and rest with God indeed.
And what if, after all, the God thou seekest
Were here, not yonder,—God in act to be,
To find and know Himself for evermore?