The times are gone when only few were fit To view with open vision the sublime, When for the rest an altar-rail sufficed To obscure the democratic Christ.... Perceiving now his gift, demanding it, The benison of common benefit, Men, women, all, Interpreters of time, Have found that lordly Christ apocryphal While Christ the comrade comes again--no wraith Of virtue in a far-off faith But a companion hearty, natural, Who sorrows with indomitable eyes For his mistreated plan To share with all men the upspringing sod, The unfolding skies-- Not God who made Himself the Man, But a man who proved man's unused worth-- And made himself the God. Once you had listened, Celia, to a stream And lain a long time, silent as a sleeper. And then your word arrived as from beyond Your body, bending with its breath the frond Of a fern. You whispered to the listening stream: "As evil is yet wider than we dream, So good is deeper." ... O how I try to bring Your voice to say in mine that word!--to sing Clear-hearted as a mountain-spring Of the wonders we see deepening! Time cannot bury what the blest have thought, For there is resurrection far and near. Often it seems as though a single day had brought To each bright hemisphere Courage to cast The servitude And blinded glory of the past Away and in a flash had taught Purpose and fortitude.... But not so swiftly are we wrought. By many single days we learn to live, By many flashes read the vision clear That every heart is equal debtor To its own and every breast For the good before the better, The better toward the best.