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With high pavilions, sunrise-gilt,
By the white-footed mornings trod,
How glorious are the hills of God,
How stately-fair His world is built!
Grandly His mighty rivers sweep,
His strong seas beat against their bars
And His great company of stars
In state the heavenly highways keep.

 

But let His angels rather gaze
(Who heavenly weights and measures know
And the long ways that spirits go),
Upon this last work of the days.
O kingly, fallen Humanity!
The morning-stars that sang thy birth
Called thee the glory of the earth,
But little knew God's thought of thee.

 

For here is clay that holdeth fire,
And slaves that yet are lords of will;
Wanderers, that lift from mirey ill
Prevailing hands of pure desire
Whoso the downward path hath trod,
The wrecks of human life to scan,
Must write, This creature, being man,
Was ruined, having less than God.

 

Lo, these are they whose lot is cast
With His--howe'er they toil and strive
To keep this lower self alive,
Which death will break from them at last.
Of natures nobler than they own;
Held to their kindred in the skies
By some Godlike necessities--
That cannot live by bread alone.

 

Not painless works the fiery leaven;
These have one glory--to abide
In the full world unsatisfied;
By the one hope that, broad as heaven,
O'erlooks the narrowing walls of creed,
Proclaimed the sons of God with power;
Each, in some grandly bitter hour,
Sure to find love his sorest need.

 

On, none but men, a man can scorn!
Since for these least and lowest lives
The archangel with the demon strives;
And unto them too, souls are born,
Those wondrous things, so slowly wrought,
That breathes a subtler thing in air,
And daily at the altar fare
Upon the living bread of thought.

 

Their world is low, their days are small;
Yet to each falleth once in time
That day which makes all days sublime,
And mystery consecrates them all.
To each a glory entereth
When, wide alike to low and high,
Heirs of His own eternity,
God opens his great gates of _death_.