Book VI, Canto III: Faith

" Humbly I heard him, fair as morning-tide,
Whose high humility love-lore supplied.

" ' The future generations of such men
Will marvel at what little moved them then.
Behold the gloom that hides the morrow parts ;
And lo ! well-tended homes, and kindlier hearts !
These evil natures, wandering astray.
Have only arrived less far upon their way ;
And they must pass where they are passing now.
That through them world-experience may grow.
The Lord transmuteth leaden ill to gold
With all-compelling alchemies untold ;
/-Eonial fire will melt the hardest stone ;
By wave-persistence cliffs lie overthrown ;
Through weathering circumstance high hills are gone.

" ' What ! were you frighted with your own thin shadow
Adown the lawny, flower-illumined meadow,
Poor timid doe.
As you ran below ?
Distortions of your short and feeble sight,
Calumniating our fair sons of light !
You feared grim idols your own mind had wrought,
Confusions of a miscreating thought.
Feared you yourselves would all dissolve and fade
In Time and space, which ye yourselves have made ?
Mere images phantasmal of the mind,
Who knows but shadows of true things behii.d!
Nay ! for the soul is mistress, and not slave !
Let her assume dominion, nobly brave :
For these, not she herself, shall feed the grave.

" ' The spirit of the universe will leaven,
However slowly, our poor earth with heaven;
Only with ampler dawn of holy light
More sharply show the shadows of the night.
God's foes have grown more desperately bold,
Sore pressed, and driven to their last stronghold.
The bruising of the ground, the stern upheaval
Quickeneth germs of health, and feedeth evil.
Plant higher types, for these at length prevail,
Strong to extirpate lower growths of bale —
The Human deepens, widens evermore.
Till young Love reign from shining shore to shore.

' ' ' The general Soul, with hidden help from you.
Adapts fit frame for life-relation new.
Death's changed environment ; Heaven will endue
With novel organ for communion,
Congenial with powers ye put on
For ampler knowledge — whosoe'er indict
That mellow wisdom of the Stagyrite.