my fathers in that land,
Where canker and corruption never comes,
The why, and wherefore of it, is his own;
I bow my head in thankfulness to him,
That he has deemed me worthy to exchange
A life of sorrow for a crown of love.

"Ye are the servants of an earthly King,
And God has suffered him to lead you off,
His will be done; but I must tell you now
Your future as I read it in the glass
Of my illumined death:
"I see the black
Of Mizraim, sweep the brown of Lud from off
The face of Egypt; and I also see
A wandering race, go northward, and to east;
I see a bitter wintering of snow;
I see the sun hide back his face from them;
I see a boisterous buffeting at sea;
I see a journey southward--a new world."

"And centuries flow swiftly on my sight.
A people proudly resting in their wealth;
The Son of God, in the full flight of years;
The conquest of the nations in his name.
A proud and prosperous people cross the sea
And swoop upon this nation of the sun;
Their temples crumble in the hand of God
And he takes back his own. All this I see
As what cannot avert; it is God's way,
And wisdom is the wastage of his throne.
He cannot order wrongly; I submit
My wasting image to his waiting hands:
"Come Father! I am ready."

He raised him to the pile; with look divine,
He prone himself upon it; at the sign
The Prophet Uri raised the crystal stone;
The sun threw down its rays, and shot the flame
Full to the center; as the altar shone,
Each eye was turned, and every voice was tame,
As down the chancel of the deep blue sky,
A flaming chariot sped, and came a cry:
"It is enough, come higher up; thou shalt
Not suffer death." A hand, not human, caught
The grand old Prophet; his recumbent form
Rose on their dazzled sight as rainbow in the storm.

Thus was the error fixed; and it is well
We leave them to their blindness for a while.
Misguided worship, left alone, will tell
Its own pathetic story: there is guile
To underlie each sorrow of the race.
Fruit comes alone from seed; somewhere is sown
The germ of every grief, and nature on its face
Bears no repentant feature; as we plant, so shall the tree