WHAT if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved While yet on earth and was beloved in turn, And still remembered every look and tone Of that dear earthly sister who was left Among the unwise virgins at the gate,-- Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,-- What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host Of chanting angels, in some transient lull Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour Some wilder pulse of nature led astray And left an outcast in a world of fire, Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends, Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain From worn-out souls that only ask to die,-- Would it not long to leave the bliss of heaven,-- Bearing a little water in its hand To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain With Him we call our Father? Or is all So changed in such as taste celestial joy They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe; The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed Her cradle slumbers; she who once had held A babe upon her bosom from its voice Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same? No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,-- Not in those earliest days when men ran wild And gashed each other with their knives of stone, When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows And their flat hands were callous in the palm With walking in the fashion of their sires, Grope as they might to find a cruel god To work their will on such as human wrath Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left With rage unsated, white and stark and cold, Could hate have shaped a demon more malign Than him the dead men mummied in their creed And taught their trembling children to adore! Made in his image! Sweet and gracious souls Dear to my heart by nature's fondest names, Is not your memory still the precious mould That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer? Thus only I behold Him, like to them, Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath, If wrath it be that only wounds to heal, Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin, Longing to clasp him in a father's arms, And seal his pardon with a pitying tear!