Classic Poem

" Take my Newspaper a moment!"
(Here I did so) " Read the headings:"
" Shipwreck of the Golden Mary —
Loss of every Soul on board!

" Earthquake in Sardinia. Twenty
Villages destroyed entirely.
Many thousand living creatures
Swallow'd in the black abysses. . . .

" Floods in China ... Decimation
Of much populated districts,
Whither, while the folk were sleeping,
Rush'd the great destroying waters ...

" Cholera in Russia! ... Famine
In the East! and millions starving! ...
Railway accident in Texas,
Sickening details " (columns long).

" Look on Nature. Hear the wailing
Of a million martyr'd beings —
Tell me, then, the God you pray to
Cares one straw for human life!

" Well it is for you , sir, coming
From a fireside calm and cosy,
To believe some kindly Person
Rules the destinies of Earth!

" Pestilence, Disease, and Famine
Desolate this world you praise so;
Who shall bid them cease their ravage? —
Who shall say to Death — " Go by! " "

Then I answer'd, hot and angry,
" Grant the pain and grant the carnage
(How my soul has sicken'd o'er them!)
Grant the thousand woes of men!

" This they prove, and this thing only:
Human life as we behold it
Is as nothing in the vision
Of a larger Thought than ours.

" All this world and its delusions,
All this life, its joys and sorrows,
Death itself, become as nothing,
When we learn that nought can die.

" Dreamer!" said he. " One thing certain
Is the death of every unit;
Life, I grant you, is eternal,
But the personal life must pass.

" Nay, not only lesser beings,
But the greater with the lesser —
Like the individual unit
Dies the individual world!

" Look at men. Regard them closely —
Mark the madmen chasing bubbles,
Pleasure, honour, reputation,
Gold and women most of all!

" Think you things like these are worthy
Of eternal prolongation? —
God knows better — in Death's furnace
Melts the dross for other uses!

" God?" he cried. " If such a Ruler,
Wise, Omnipotent, All-seeing,
Had concerned Himself in making
Worlds at all, and living creatures,

" He'd have made them wholly perfect,
With no fuss of evolution . . . . ;
If there is a God, He blunder'd:
Man is here to set Him right!"