To fit the better world my toil ensures, Time will impregnate with a better race The Future’s womb: and when the hour is ripe, To ready eyes of men, the alien spheres Shall seem as friendly neighbours: and my skill Shall make their music audible to ears Which will be tuned to those high harmonies.

Mine is the work to fashion, step by step, The shining Way that leads from man to God. Though I demolish obstacles of creeds And blast tradition, from the face of earth, My hand shall open wide the door of Truth, p. 59Whose other name is Faith: and at the end Of this most holy labour, I shall turn To see Religion, with enlightened eyes, Seeking the welcome of my outstretched arms. While all the world stands hushed and awed before The proven splendour of the Fact Supreme.

p. 59

p. 60THE EARTH

p. 60

I

To build a house, with love for architect, Ranks first and foremost in the joys of life. And in a tiny cabin, shaped for two, The space for happiness is just as great As in a palace. What a world were this If each soul born received a plot of ground; A little plot, whereon a home might rise, And beauteous green things grow! We give the dead, The idle vagrant dead, the Potter’s Field; Yet to the living not one inch of soil. Nay, we take from them soil, and sun, and air, To fashion slums and hell-holes for the race. And to our poor we say, ‘Go starve and die As beggars die; so gain your heritage.’

p. 61II

p. 61

That was a most uncanny dream; I thought the wraiths of those Long buried in the Potter’s Field, in shredded shrouds arose; They said, ‘Against the will of God We have usurped the fertile sod, Now will we make it yield.’

Oh! but it was a gruesome sight, to see those phantoms toil; Each to his own small garden bent; each spaded up the soil;  (I never knew Ghosts laboured so.)  Each scattered seed, and watched, till lo! The Graves were opulent.

Then all among the fragrant greens, the silent, spectral train Walked, as if breathing in the 

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