Adjustments

Nay, sceptic, leave thy crucibles
That burn the soul from primal cells!
Nay, cloistered bigot, swinging there
Vast Hades for a censer, spare!
Dissolve not life thy life to know;
Cure not brief woes by infinite woe!

I know that wretches steeped in crime
Walk dripping with infectious slime
Where innocence in pearly white,
Unwarned, endures the burning blight.
But how their mutual, endless hell
Gives compensation, who can tell?

I know that Lazarus groans on earth 
In bitter beggary from his birth;
And Dives, clad in grand array,
Fares sumptuously every day;
But how reversal of their lot
Makes less the misery I know not!

I know the strong oppress the weak,
The haughty trample on the meek,
And eyes of utter cruelty
Gloat o’er the wretchedness they see;
What other eyes could bear the hot
Hell-reek, unweeping, I know not!

I know pain sits with pointed knife
At every avenue of life,
By gentle sting or deadly thrust
To teach us – what we ought we must;
But how unending pangs may bless
Who sees, or suffers, I cannot guess.

I know that bitter may grow sweet
By ripening, and the furnace-heat
Of temporal suffering burn away
From hidden gold the cumbering clay;
How evil here to good may grow,
And not beyond, I do not know.

I know that love surpasses hate;
That patient faith outwearies fate;
That man is one, and naught is good
That sunders human brotherhood;
Why hate should live and love should die
Where reigns the “Good God” – know not I.

For boundless love and power may claim
Alone the homage of that name;
Weak were the arm compelled to meet
In its own work its own defeat;
Fiendish the will that could bestow
Sensation for eternal woe!

If pangs of evil in sin’s black brood
Were birth-throes of immortal good,
And all the agonies of time
To heavenly raptures grew sublime,
Our souls, forseeing this, could swell 
The song – “He doeth all things well!”

If in some far advancing sphere
The darkest soul that wallowed here –
Burned white by love – should bid farewell 
To the last smoking brand of hell,
Then first might perfect Good alone
Ascend his universal throne.

Till we have seen a path star-lit
Upwinding from the lowest pit, 
Where the great Mother’s love shall win
Her alien sons redeemed from sin,
We cannot answer hearts who cry
“No God!” in sad sincerity.

Alike the bigot’s censer-smoke
And sceptic’s chemic solvent choke
The living soul, that needs the wealth
Of unwalled heavens to bring its health;
The records of all depth and heigh
To give it wisdom and delight!