I shut my eyes and opened them,

And while they were shut I saw

All the dread things that happen to men

In the name of cause and law.

I saw the tortured toil and travail

As the cost of bread and birth;

I saw the skein of fate unravel

Around the helpless earth;

A million who had nobly striven

Go down to grim defeat,

A million who their heart-blood given

Spurned from proud Honor’s seat;

Hope mocked and dear ideals shattered,

Truth crushed and crucified,

The fruits of love and labor scattered

And Greed o’er Goodness ride;

Curse like a ghoul despair and sorrow

Leave at the race’s door,

Pledging to-morrow and to-morrow

Cursing the world still more.

And as men were broken and stricken

I saw the darkness loom

To a frown of Hate and slowly thicken

To a spectral shape of Doom.

Shadows, thunders, griefs and grossness

Gathered in a blacker mass,

Life’s calamities and crosses

Wrapped the midnight of all space

Into—God! What awful likeness

Of a giant arm and wrist

Bulking blacker still to smite us

As a clenched terrific FIST!

I shut my eyes and opened them,

And when they were open I saw

All the glad things that happen to men

By a more benignant law.

I saw the smiling heaven bending

Above the fruitful land,

The beauty and the bounty blending,

The kiss of sea on strand;

The love in labor and the guerdon

Of home and wrought ideal,

The benison behind the burden,

The worth which works the weal;

The glory of the sacrificial,

The sanctity and song

Of Nature’s benedictive missal

O’er suffering and wrong.

I saw the good and grace of seasons

Aglow with golden yield,

And giving trust a thousand reasons

In flowerfest and field;

Until a misty plexus trembled

In midair and anon

A presence as of Love resembled

Diaphanous at dawn,

With morning vestments all a-shimmer,

Yet from whose potent charm

Of godlike gloriole and glimmer

There stretched a Titan ARM.

Earth and sky seemed coalescing

By filmy fingers spanned

And became as if in blessing

A mighty, OPEN HAND.