Thou givest us youth that turns to age; And strength that leaves us while we seek. Thou pourest the fire of sacred rage In costly vessels all too weak. Great works we planned in hopes that Thou Fit wisdom therefor wouldst accord; Thou wrotest failure on our brow-- Have mercy, Lord! Could we but know, as Thou dost know-- Hold the whole scheme at once in mind! Yet, dost Thou watch our anxious woe Who piece with palsied hands and blind The fragments of our little plan, To thrive and earn Thy blest reward, And make and keep the world of man-- Have mercy, Lord! Thou settest the sun within his place To light the world, the world is Thine, Put in our hands and through Thy grace To be subdued and made divine. Whether we serve Thee ill or well, Thou knowest our frame, nor canst afford To leave Thy own for long in hell-- Have mercy, Lord! THE CONVERSATION _The Human Voice_ You knew then, starting let us say with ether, You would become electrons, out of whirling Would rise to atoms; then as an atom resting Till through Yourself in other atoms moving And by the fine affinity of power Atom with atom massed, You would go on Over the crest of visible forms transformed, Would be a molecule, a little system Wherein the atoms move like suns and planets With satellites, electrons. So as worlds build From star-dust, as electron to electron, The same attraction drawing, molecules Would wed and pass over the crest again Of visible forms, lying content as crystals, Or colloids--ready now to use the gleam Of life. As 'twere I see You with a match, As one in darkness lights a candle, and one Sees not his friend's form in the shadowed room Until the candle's lighted? Even his form Is darkened by the new-made light, he stands So near it! Well, I add to all I've asked Whether You knew the cell born to the glint Of that same lighted candle would not rest Even as electrons rest not--but would surge Over the crest of visible forms, become Beneath our feet things hidden from the eye However aided,--as above our heads Beyond the Milky Way great systems whirl Beyond the telescope,--become bacilli, Amoeba, starfish, swimming things, on land The serpent, and then birds, and beasts of prey The tiger (You in the tiger) on and on Surging above the crest of visible forms until The ape came--oh what ages they are to us-- But still creation flies on wings of light-- Then to the man who roamed the frozen fields Neither man nor ape,--we found his jaw, You know, At Heidelberg, in a sand-pit. On and on Till Babylon was builded, and arose Jerusalem and Memphis, Athens, Rome, Venice and Florence, Paris, London, Berlin, New York, Chicago--did You know, I ask, All this would come of You in ether moving? _A Voice_ I knew. _The Human Voice_