Classic Poem

In the dark fields of space the stars are like the flowers:
They fill the heavenly meads, and light the heavenly bowers,
Some great and strong and grand,
Some small and weak perhaps; some scentless orbs and homely;
Some proud and haughty stars; some queenly stars and comely;
Some, wastes of rock and sand.

Some stars are like a rose, and some are as carnations,
And some are hedge-flower stars. We needs must still have patience
If our star be but small:
A hedge-flower star indeed, — a weed perhaps, comparing
Its glory with the rest; a planet very daring
To tread the lists at all.

Patience! the earth is ours. One day, when man is hoary,
When every field of earth with battle-blood is gory,
When the great task is done,
When pain is at an end, pain having taught its lesson,
The earth will win a calm beauty beyond expression
And rival the old sun.

For every star a heaven, for every soul a heaven:
This hope supreme and fair to each man's heart is given
From Hebrew days to these.
The Hebrew prophets preached the end of sorrow and sinning;
And now, as if the song of hope were but beginning,
It chimes in English seas.

Although our star be ranked, in the vast astral order,
Low down indeed, though it be but posted on the border,
The outlying edge of space,
Yet two things hath the earth supremely meritorious
Achieved, supremely grand and past man's praising glorious, —
She hath this crowning grace, —

This grace: — that from her waves with infinite soft laughter
Love rose, and never quite, though Sorrow followed after,
Forsook the earth reborn:
This grace; — that, when the world was sick at heart and weary,
Earth found a Christ to die, and found a hill-side dreary
And found a wreath of thorn.