Survival of the Essential

I.
The grand High Priest at freedom’s altar fire
    Let fall his robes and passed beyond the veil;
    The dauntless courage that could never fail,
The eloquent voice that might have taught the choir
Of harping angels notes divinely higher,
    The inviolate faith that was as steel-linked mail,
    And words that were keen falchions to assail
The foes of man, or trumpets to inspire
    Oppression’s foe – ah me! they too, have passed!
Ravished from ear and eye and thrilling heart.
Dull earth, the body’s heir, reclaims her part;
    His gold to the lap of weeping love is cast;
But that diviner worth we hunger for,
    What treasury guards? or who is its inheritor?

II.
Our moulded substance, when its work is done,
    Is taken back to being’s formless whole,
    To feed new shapes, or clothe some later soul;
Through all our day its atoms, one by one,
Live with our lives and vanish, fleeting on,
    To wave below us in the billows roll,
    Or in green boughs above, or yet to toll
In rocking blue-bells by the tinkling run.
    No least iota is lost, or changes kind,
Though borne in air, impalpable and unseen;
    All-provident Nature in her frugal mind
Sees use in every substance, and with a keen
Alacrity creates the newer mould
Of blooming life again from ashes of the old.
III.
Shall the crude elements of bone and flesh,
    And subtle essence of whatever name,
    Survive all changes, changelessly the same
As in primeval centuries, pure and fresh, –
And the clear soul, that slips the narrow mesh,
    Of matter’s warp and woof, go out like flame,
    Leaving no shred of its etherial frame
To shape new thoughts, or hold its own in leash?
    Is love’s fire poorer than the carbon’s spark
That burns to tell it in the bridal ring?
    Shall courage cease, and phosphorous haunt the dark
Of martyrs’ tombs? wit perish, and new spring 
Remould the dust it quickened? Then O God,
Were all our noblest naught, and purest faith a fraud!
IV.
Perish the blasphemy that the Infinite Sire
    Is not as careful of our souls, which all
    Live from his life, as is the power ye call
Blind Nature of her children! Love, desire,
Thought, wisdom, worship, and the rhythmic fire
    Of song and eloquence, are natural
    To soul as gravity to the clods that fall,
Or chemic lures in matter’s blind empire.
    Its essence clings to every element;
To every entity the form that suits;
    Clay, fixed or free, still keeps its own unspent;
Soul, clothed or bared, shall guard its attributes.
So all the gifts the growing spirit won
From our eternal Sire, proclaim the eternal Son!
V.
The falchion’s lightning and the thunder roll
    Of freedom’s buried champion, are not lost,
    He has gone up to join the invisible host
Whose soundless tramp beats time with every soul
Who strikes a blow for liberty, and keeps whole
    Our changing ranks that on the stormy coast
    Of earth seems broken, aye, dismayed almost,
When the night deepens round the distant goal.
    He is what he hath been, sublimely great
In all the integral manhood of his life.
    The essential nature none can alienate
And none inherit, pure in peace or strife,
    Must be his own, to serve all human needs
    In whatsoever world hath room for noble deeds!