Classic Poem

Time was when rung cathedral bells
O'er all the quiet lands;
And awe-hushed multitudes received
God's life at priestly hands.

Man questioned not the churches' word,
Nor dared the churches' bann,
But like a brook within its banks
His aspirations ran.

But brooks in mountains take their rise;
And mountains from the sky
Their pouring floods receive, that all
Man's barriers defy.

New floods of light and truth and life
Broke on the hills one day,
And, pouring downward to the plain,
Swept all the banks away.

The flood rose over all the earth;
And the cathedral bell
Rung wild alarm until its walls
In one vast ruin fell.

The flood rose over all the earth;
It rose o'er hill-tops high,
And lifted its exultant hands
To greet the startled sky.

This flood of questioning swept on;
It tested all the creeds;
And naught escaped but truth and love
And human-helping deeds.

In their new liberty men asked
The stars their secret old
And how the days of spring produce
The harvest-heads of gold,

And how life came upon the earth;
What distant ages wrought;
And how is born within the brain
The mystery of thought.

And then they questioned poverty,
Man's sorrow and man's sin;
And through what chemic compound rare
Life's secret they might win.

The stars their secret still withhold;
The brain thought's mystery hides;
And wrong and poverty remain,
And sorrow still abides.

Then was it better when the bell
Rocked the cathedral tower,
And awe-hushed multitudes knelt down
Beneath the priesthood's power?

Is life now happier than of yore,
Since in its feverish quest
It's lost its old-time peace, and found
Not yet abiding rest?

Nay, if man be indeed a child
Of the eternal life,
Better than, pillowed on a lie,
Must be an endless strife.

For, in the eternal search for truth,
His growing powers are taught
To nerve their sinews till they're strong
To scale the heights of thought.

To sleep with perfect truth itself
For pillow 'neath his head,
This is his birthright to forego,
And live as he were dead.

But in pursuit of truth and God,
Up height on height of time,
Through godlike growth he vindicates
His godlike birth sublime.

And none but he that's infidel
May doubt that truth, some day,
Will give man back a fairer earth
Than that she swept away.