The Good Supreme

Wretches wallowing in the slime
Of unutterable crime,
Smothering in the wreck of sin
The one spirit God breathed in
To your mould of mortal dust,
Sweltering in unholy lust;
All your mingling among men
Breathes the venom of the fen;
Every footprint in your path
Burns with desolating sooth;
Youth and Beauty at your breath
Wither to dishonored death.
Can the God who made you pure
Your unholy lives endure?
Or turn back your feet, astray
To the straight and narrow way!
Have our grave Physicians found
Healing for a mortal wound?
Or hath God withdrawn his care
Leaving sinners to despair!

What is this the Preachers tell?—
“Naught but an eternal Hell
Thronged by demons full of ire,
Armed with ninefold whips of five
Can avenge the broken law
On your shoulders peeled and raw!”
Making your revolt sublime
In its everlasting time!

Where is then the Power we deem
Good, unchanging and supreme?
If a finite rebel’s will
Lives forage a rebel still?
Or compels Him who controls
To quench many a million souls
Whom his own immortal breath
Lighted, never to know death?

Haply hath the prophet cured
Uttering a faithless word – 
Who can sink his fathom line
To the depth of the Divine?
Or extend his measuring wand
Forth to where is no Beyond?
Can a Soul out-weary God
Who evoked it from the clod?
Or exhaust the infinite love
That broods o’er it from above?
Have ye seen that Purpose ran
From the monad up to Man
To evolve that cunning brain
Over all below to reign,
And yet doubt this power to save
The immortal spark he gave?
Priest and Pastor ye are wrong!
God is Love and love is strong,
In forever[???] He began
To unfold this marvel, Man, 
Out of clay, and worm, and beast,
Toward the greatest from the least;
And if eons yet must roll
Ere the brute forsakes the soul
Faith, undoubting in the name
Of the Maker, shall proclaim
That the thing of old begun
As God liveth, shall be done!