Classic Poem

THE PROPHETS

Because ye sicken of thought (if e'er
indeed ye have dared to affront the waste
that stares within your heart), to dare
all else and cross the world with haste.

and haste backwards again, and daze
your soul with doing — why, this had been
honestly to live out your ways,
considering not what things may mean.

But, because Eden lives by strife
of loving powers, that all may reach
the plenitude of beauty and life,
single, distinct, and whole in each;

and since the nations' frontiers stand
sunder'd, that so each voice might chime
pure in the perfect concert plann'd
to unfold the divine image in time;

to prate and cant that we, the more
we hate and slay, the more are we
law-doers, were this not to whore
with vision, most abominably?