The Reformer

Man of the future! on the eager headland standing,
Gazing far off into the outer sea,
Thine eye, the darkness and the billows rough commanding,
Beholds a shore, bright as the heaven itself may be;
"Where temples, cities, homes, and haunts of men,
Orchards and fields spread out in orderly array,
Invite the yearning soul to thither flee,
And there to spend in boundless peace its happier day.
By passion and the force of earnest thought,
Borne up and platformed at a height,
Where,'gainst thy feet the force of earth and heaven are brought,
Yet, so into the frame of empire wrought,
Thou, stout man, canst not thence be sever'd,
Till ruled and rulers, fiends or men, are taught
And feel the truths by thee delivered.
Seize by its horns the shaggy Past,
Full of uncleanness; heave with mountain-cast
Its carcase down the black and wide abyss —
That opens day and night its gulfy precipice,
By faded empires, projects old and dead
Forever in its noisy hunger fed:
But rush not, therefore, with a brutish blindness,
Against the 'stablished bulwarks of the world;
Kind be thyself, although unkindness
Thy race to ruin dark and suffering long has hurl'd.
For many days of light, and smooth repose,
'Twist storms and weathery sadness intervene;
Thy course is nature's: on thy triumph flows,
Assured, like hers, though noiseless and serene.
"Wake not at midnight and proclaim it day,
When lightning only flashes o'er the way;
Pauses and starts, and strivings towards an end,
Are not a birth, although a god's birth they portend.
Be patient, therefore, like the old broad earth
That bears the guilty up, and through the night
Conducts them gently to the dawning light —
Thy silent hours shall have as great a birth.