And fill the eager wants of the New Age's youth.

A thousand flashes of uncertain light
Cleave the thick darkness, driving far athwart
The up-piled glooms, as lightnings plough their bright
Fire-furrows through the barren cloud
They sow with thunders. Thought on burning thought
Shatters the doubts and terrors which have bowed
Weak hearts on weaker leaning in a crowd
Self-crushing and self-fettering; gleams are caught
From some far centre set by God to keep
His brave world spinning, or some drifting isle
Of swift wildfire shot out by the wide sweep
Of wings demoniac,
Far winnowing and black,
Our cheated souls to 'wilder and beguile.
Only the years, the imperturbable,
Impassionate years, can sheave the scattered rays
Into one sun, these mingled arrows tell
Each to its quiver, the divine and fell,
And life's lone meteors to their centre trace.

O Father, let me not die young!
Earth's beauty asks a heart and tongue
To give true love and praises to her worth;
Her sins and judgment-sufferings call
For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth
From her disastrous fall.
For though her summer hills and vales might seem
The fair creation of a poet's dream,--