Classic Poem

I dreamed that I was God, the great All-seeing;
The ceaseless urge was mine
That fires the throbbing, blood-red heart of Being,
The Alchemist divine.
I saw and knew that lesser good is evil,
The evil lesser good;
That love can change the basest hell-upheaval
To human brotherhood.

I heard the tramp of onward-marching nations,
I saw their mirth and tears;
I felt the passions of the generations
That thundered down the years;
I clashed as foe with foeman, fire-hearted,
I heard the war-guns boom,
And in the deep abyss of years departed,
I found a nameless tomb.

And I was woman, felt her degradation,
Marked how her wrongs began,
The justice of her claims, their violation;
I saw her slave to man.
I felt the wounds of haughty condescension
My tender heart annoy;
I was the fire beneath each cold convention,
Of motherhood, the joy.

When souls oppressed with sense of sin knelt pleading,
I felt their bitter shame;
When priests with bigot creeds, my words misreading,
Blasphemed my very name,
My heart misunderstood was bleeding, breaking,
The penitent to show
How I was yearning, all things else forsaking,
To his relief to go.

I lived in superstition's dark dominions
And saw her cruel deeds,
The Calvaries of new and brave opinions,
The martyrdom of creeds;
I bowed my cosmic soul to wealth and fashion,
In commerce revelled now;
I wreathed with wisdom's halo of dead passion
My philosophic brow.

I was the ancient East, whose pomp and splendour
Went down in shame and lust,
And I the power from her base course to bend her
And trample her in dust;
But when the sunset cities newly rising
Stood selfishly apart,
I was the modern East, the world surprising
With renaissance of art.

The separating prejudice of races,
The temper of their souls,
The North, the South, the colour of their faces,
Their pathways and their goals;
All these was I, the Spirit of the Ages,
The meaning of them all,
I penned the word of doom on life's stern pages,
The writing on the wall.

And Love was mine, the joy and power supernal
To make the loathsome ways
That rise up from the deeps of gloom infernal
With heavenly lustre blaze;
Hope too came fresh into the bright arena,
And faith was born anew;
My soul illumined with divine arcana
To Godlike stature grew.

The government of men was on my shoulders,
Their onward march I planned;
Mine was the wealth of earth despite its holders,
The gold in every land.
I was the body and the soul of all things
In industry and art;
For me the world had no more great or small things
Since all were in my heart.

The cosmic plan was good whate'er appearance
Might need my chastening rod;
My law was just and brooked no interference
Or blame — was I not God?
For law was love-wise purpose everlasting
In cosmic sentence writ,
And duty, the demand of love, outcasting
All but the soul of it.

Yet man, allured by fame or fortune's leading,
His brotherhood forgot,
And all the yearning of my heart unheeding,
My Love remembered not;
And thus amid the splendours of my heaven,
Reproach and wrong were there,
Injustice and oppression unforgiven,
And forms of life unfair.

Then all humanity in love-surrender, —
Its blight of scar and blot,
I poured into Love's all-consuming splendour,
The cosmic melting-pot.
Then slowly rose such majesty of feeling,
Such clear-eyed vision too,
That all the ills of life found perfect healing
And earth was made anew.

The partisan subdued his petty passions,
The miser spent his hoard,
The haughty heart despised its futile fashions
And nations sheathed the sword;
For all was Love, the central soul of being,
The all-embracing stream,
The fountain-head of joy, the eye all-seeing —
Such as my wondrous dream.

Then, in the mystery of the blue high spaces
And clouds of fleecy hue,
I came awake, and gazing on men's faces,
I found my dream was true.
The dream was true; manhood and God forever
Essentially are one,
Just as the ingle-fire you cannot sever
From its high source — the sun.

And as the spaciousness that is the ocean
To other lands invites,
Life bears the soul with strong resistless motion
To Love's celestial heights,
And dares the darkness till the great confession
Of sun-flame breaks, reborn,
And brings the soul a new, divine expression
Upon the lips of morn.

For life cannot be sounded with a plummet;
The sum of all man's deed
Is less than man, nor can it reach a summit
Sublimer than his creed.
'Tis vision, faith and courage make men greater
In Love's resistless plan;
No Bliss of the Eternal All-Creator
Can drift apart from man.

Henceforth, I give free course to faith and freedom,
With justice banish strife,
Relieve the fallen, am as Christ to lead them
And love them into life;
Till earth, transformed by labour, joy and pity,
A home of comrade hearts,
Shall rise and shine in every land and city
With unexampled arts.

Henceforth whate'er the cup of time containeth
Of evil, pain or strife,
The power of Love, long as the earth remaineth
A crucible of life,
Shall lift the soul on far-uprising pinions
In heaven's ethereal sea,
To dwell forever in the bright dominions
Of Love's eternity.

I seek no lethean stream of self-forgetting
To hide me in its wave,
No gem-oasis in its desert-setting,
No lotus-dream I crave;
But life athrill, unfettered and abounding,
Free as the winds are free,
Fresh as the vernal forest, breeze-resounding,
Deep as the blue-domed sea.

Let every soul beneath the star-strewn ceiling
For life's own sake be free;
Flame every beacon fire, set joy-bells pealing
From hills of victory;
For as the eagle to his eyry soaring
Along the crags of time,
In Love's high service every power outpouring,
All life shall be sublime.