For that host of blotted ones,
Take these glittering central suns.
Few;--but how their lustre thrives
On the million broken lives!
Splendid, over dark and doubt,
For a million souls gone out!
These, the holders of our hoard,--
Wilt thou not accept them, Lord?


V

Oh, in the wakening thunders of the heart,
--The small lost Eden, troubled through the night,
Sounds there not now,--forboded and apart,
Some voice and sword of light?
Some voice and portent of a dawn to break?--
Searching like God, the ruinous human shard
Of that lost Brother-man Himself did make,
And Man himself hath marred?

It sounds!--And may the anguish of that birth
Seize on the world; and may all shelters fail,
Till we behold new Heaven and new Earth
Through the rent Temple-vail!
When the high-tides that threaten near and far
To sweep away our guilt before the sky,--
Flooding the waste of this dishonored Star,
Cleanse, and o'erwhelm, and cry!--