blime,
When for the rest an altar-rail sufficed
To obscure the democratic Christ....
Perceiving now his gift, demanding it,
The benison of common benefit,
Men, women, all,
Interpreters of time,
Have found that lordly Christ apocryphal
While Christ the comrade comes again--no wraith
Of virtue in a far-off faith
But a companion hearty, natural,
Who sorrows with indomitable eyes
For his mistreated plan
To share with all men the upspringing sod,
The unfolding skies--
Not God who made Himself the Man,
But a man who proved man's unused worth--
And made himself the God.

Once you had listened, Celia, to a stream
And lain a long time, silent as a sleeper.
And then your word arrived as from beyond
Your body, bending with its breath the frond
Of a fern. You whispered to the listening stream:
"As evil is yet wider than we dream,
So good is deeper." ...
O how I try to bring
Your voice to say in mine that word!--to sing
Clear-hearted as a mountain-spring
Of the wonders we see deepening!

Time cannot bury what the blest have thought,
For there is resurrection far and near.
Often it seems as though a single day had brought
To each bright hemisphere
Courage to cast
The servitude
And blinded glory of the past
Away and in a flash had taught
Purpose and fortitude....
But not so swiftly are we wrought.
By many single days we learn to live,
By many flashes read the vision clear
That every heart is equal debtor
To its own and every breast
For the good before the better,
The better toward the best.

When we who hugged awhile the golden bowl
Of greed behold it now a sieve
Through which is drained invisibly
A nectar we were saving for the soul,
Then not in vain have many gone
The empty ways of stealth
Seeking a firmer base than honesty
For building happiness upon....
And by the ancient agonizing test
We have slowly guessed
That a just portion of the whole
Is all there is of wealth.
When those who labor wake
And care ...
And through the tingling air
A dead man's voice, by living men renewed
And women, dares democracy
To self-respect: "Open the lands! Let mankind share
The ample livelihood they bear!"--
Then not in vain have the poor known distress,
Teaching the rich that happiness
Is something no man may--possess.
Little by little we, whose fathers fought
Impassion