OUR hopes, our fears,
Our love and hate,
Our joys and tears,
Our throws with fate,
What are they all but phantoms fleeting past,
Weak creatures of a day, which but a day may last?

But the great Scheme
Fares on its course
Thro' Time's long dream
Of changing force
It saw the plesiosaur and mastodon
Wax strong, and dwindle down, and still goes silent on.

It saw the ape
Rule every land,
The cave-man shape
Flints for his hand.
It saw a thousand generations pass
Across life's mournful stage, like visions in a glass.

It saw the strange
Forgotten Kings,
Ages of change,
Terrible things,
It saw the Egyptian and the Assyrian come,
The gay Hellenic bloom, the rugged sway of Rome.

These too it saw
Totter and fall,
A purer law
O'er-ruling all,
And then the arrested march, the long delay,
The baffled hope, the Dawn fading to common day.

It makes no cry,
It lifts no voice,
Tho' all things die,
Tho' all rejoice,
It goes unceasing onward, blind and dumb,
Nor halts, nor hastes, nor heeds whatever things may come.

Eternal Scheme,
Great Lord of all,
August, Supreme,
Prostrate we fall,
We cannot know Thy working, nor its end,
Nor by what hidden paths Thy Perfect Will may tend.

But if one word
Might come, or sign,
Our souls were stirred
To growths divine,
No longer should we walk in fear and doubt,
Like children in dark ways, before the stars come out.

Ah no! the word
The soul can hear
Is only heard
By the inner ear,
No outward light it is which can illume
The spiritual eye, and pierce the enshrouding gloom.

An inborn light,
An inner voice,
Which burneth bright,
Which doth rejoice,
A Faith in things unseen, an inward sight
Which thro' a wrecked world sees the victory of Right.

With this our guide,
Our strength, our stay,
No more aside
Our footsteps stray.
Fulfil Thyself, Great Scheme, Eternal Plan,
Work out — we ask no word — the Destiny of Man.