The World Grows Better

Lord of all the Universe, when I think of YOU,
Flinging stars out into space, moving suns and tides;
Then this little mortal mind gets the larger view,
And the carping self of me runs away and hides.

Then I see all shadowed paths leading out to Light;
See the false things fade away, leaving but the True;
See the wrong things slay themselves, leaving only Right;
When this little mortal mind gets the larger view.

Cavillings at this and that, censure, doubt and fear,
Fly, as fly before the dawn, insects of the night;
Life and Death are understood; everything seems clear,
All the wrong things slay themselves, leaving only Right.

The World has walked with fever in its veins
For many and many a day.    Oh, poor, sick world!
Not knowing all its dreams of gree...

When with clanging and with ringing
    Comes the year's initial day,
I can feel the rhythmic swinging
    Of the world upon its way;
And though Right still wears a fetter,
    And though Justice still is blind,
Time's beyond is always better
    Than the paths he leaves behind.

In our eons of existence,
    As we circle through the night,
We annihilate the distance
    'Twixt the darkness and the light.
From beginnings crude and lowly,
    Round and round our souls have trod
Through the circles, winding slowly
    Up to knowledge and to God.

With each century departed
    Some old evil found a tomb,
Some old truth was newly started
    In propitious soil to bloom.
With each epoch some condition
    That has handicapped the...

On the river of life, as I float along,
    I see with the spirit's sight
That many a nauseous weed of wrong
    Has root in a seed of right.
For evil is good that has gone astray,
    And sorrow is only blindness,
And the world is always under the sway
    Of a changeless law of kindness.

The commonest error a truth can make
    Is shouting its sweet voice hoarse,
And sin is only the soul's mistake
    In misdirecting its force.
And love, the fairest of all fair things
    That ever to man descended,
Grows rank with nettles and poisonous things
    Unless it is watched and tended.

There could not be anything better than this
    Old world in the way it began;
And though some matters have gone amiss
    From the great original plan,<...

I have not the gift of vision,
    I have not the psychic ear,
And the realms that are called Elysian
    I neither see nor hear;
Yet oft when the shadows darken
    And the daylight hides its face,
The soul of me seems to hearken
    For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,
    They speak to me not by word;
Yet my soul would be guilty of treason
    If it did not say it had heard.
For Space has a message compelling
    To give to the ear of Earth;
And the things which the Silence is telling
    In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it -
    That ever through good or ill,
The will of the Ruling Spirit
    Is moving and ruling still.
In the clutch of the blood-red ter...

Musing upon the tragedies of earth,
Of each new horror which each hour gives birth,
Of sins that scar and cruelties that blight
Life's little season, meant for man's delight,
Methought those monstrous and repellent crimes
Which hate engenders in war-heated times,
To God's great heart bring not so much despair
As other sins which flourish everywhere
And in all times - bold sins, bare-faced and proud,
Unchecked by college, and by Church allowed,
Lifting their lusty heads like ugly weeds
Above wise precepts and religious creeds,
And growing rank in prosperous days of peace.
Think you the evils of this world would cease
With war's cessation?
    If God's eyes know tears,
Methinks He weeps more for the wasted years
And the lost meaning of this earthly life -

With ever some wrong to be righting,
    With self ever seeking for place,
The world has been striving and fighting
    Since man was evolved out of space.
Bold history into dark regions
    His torchlight has fearlessly cast,
He shows us tribes warring in legions,
    In jungles of ages long passed.

Religion, forgetting her station,
    Forgetting her birthright from God,
Set nation to warring with nation
    And scattered dissension abroad.
Dear creeds have made men kill each other,
    Fair faith has bred hate and despair,
And brother has battled with brother
    Because of a difference in prayer.

But earth has grown wiser and kinder,
    For man is evolving a soul:
From wars of an age that was blinder,
    We rise to a peace-gird...