Classic Poem

It sounds along the ages,
Soul answering to soul;
It kindles on the pages
Of every Bible scroll;
The psalmists heard and sang it,
From martyr-lips it broke,
And prophet-tongues outrang it
Till sleeping nations woke.

From Sinai's cliffs it echoed,
It breathed from Buddha's tree,
It charmed in Athens' market,
It gladdened Galilee;
The hammer-stroke of Luther,
The Pilgrims' sea-side prayer,
The oracles of Concord,
One holy Word declare.

It dates each new ideal, —
Itself it knows not time;
Man's laws but catch the music
Of its eternal chime.
It calls — and lo, new Justice!
It speaks — and lo, new Truth!
In ever nobler stature
And unexhausted youth.

It everywhere arriveth;
Recks not of small and great;
It shapes the unborn atom,
It tells the sun its fate.
The wing-heat of archangel
Its boundary never nears:
Forever on it soundeth
The music of the spheres!