LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 

 
Who Stall Wear the Crown? 
 
 A CDLLDQUY, 
 
 I2T THESE PAET8. 
 
 By ERNEST. ^_-v 
 
 AUG i3 1886 
 
 CHICAGO : 
 F. H. Revell 148 and 150 Madison Street, 
 
 
 / CL 
 
 cd 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by 
 
 ADDIE BUEDICK, 4\^j 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 
 ''% | 
 
DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 
 Faith, and her daughters Hope and Charity. 
 
 Herman, the Agnostic. 
 
 Julian, the Materialist. 
 
 Ernest, the Christian Scientist. 
 
 Chronos, personating Time. 
 
 Mars, the God of War. 
 
 Cosleste, personating True Science. 
 
 The Daughters of Cceleste. 
 Astrea, the genie of the Starry Worlds. 
 Terra, the genie of the Under World. 
 Pelagia, the genie of the Waters. 
 Thia, the genie of the Aerial Heavens. 
 Flora, the genie of the Vegetable World. 
 Palea, the genie of the Animal World. 
 Hygeia, the genie of the Human Life. 
 Psyche, the genie of the Spirit World. 
 Arch^ea, the genie of the Ancient World. 
 Philogia, the genie of Human Speech. 
 
 The Nine Muses, the daughters of Philogia. 
 Clio, the muse of History. 
 Euterpe, the muse of Lyric Poetry. 
 Thalia, the muse of Comedy. 
 Melpomene, the muse of Tragedy. 
 Terpsichore, the muse of the Choral, Song and Dance. 
 Polyhymnia, the muse of the Sublime Hymn. 
 Urania, the muse of Astronomy. 
 Calliope, the muse of Epic Poetry. 
 Eroto, the muse of Love. 
 
 OTHER CHARACTERS. 
 Superstition, False Religion, False Science, Persecution, 
 
 Pestilence and Famine, Murder, Lust, Avarice, Ambi- 
 
 Hon, Covetousness, Hatred and Revenge. 
 
WO all honest seekers after the truth, to all that are 
 ■*• striving to uphold it, and especially to all his fellow- 
 laborers, the Home and Foreign Missionaries, this little 
 volume is affectionately dedicated by 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
Who Shall Wear the Crown ? 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE OLD CREATION. 
 
 [Enter, Herman, Julian and Ernest.] 
 Herman. 
 
 1 I'm in the dark, for I have failed to find 
 A clew to this deep labyrinth, the mind, 
 Or soul, if men must call it so, or spirit, 
 Which we've been taught may endless life inherit. 
 We read its thoughts on all historic pages, 
 And hear its footsteps in the march of ages; 
 But whence it came and whither it may go, 
 
 I fear, no mortal man can ever know. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 2 I'll teach you this, which any man can know: — 
 As each effect must ever have a cause, 
 
 As you may know from whence the rivers flow, 
 So know that all things come from nature's laws: 
 The long descent admits no breaks nor flaws, 
 From atoms to a mountain, or a world. 
 From rudimental cells wise nature draws 
 All forms of life, as gems from shells impearled. 
 Cells are seed, life the flowers, and mind the fruit un- 
 furled. 
 
6 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 3 You scatter germs of grain upon the land; 
 They, springing up, may bear you corn or wheat 
 In plenty, when you sow with liberal hand. 
 And why? Forsooth, effect its cause must meet. 
 Tis thus in nature all their kinds repeat. 
 
 In nature, then, some life-germs instinct bear, 
 From some intelligence the search may greet; 
 In others love, hate, joy or hope may share. 
 Tis law that fruit from seed, and mind from germs 
 must rear. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 4 But tell me, Julian, who could make the law, 
 And who the life-germs of the things that grew 
 First such a wondrous crop, from whence you 
 
 draw 
 Such sage conclusions, startling as they're new ! 
 You speak them just as if you thought them true. 
 I have a different story now to tell; 
 A grander vision rises on my view. 
 God spake, creation rose beneath the spell, [well. 
 Man, beast and bird and fish, and grass and tree as 
 
 Herman. 
 
 5 Though nothing I believe, naught I deny. 
 
 God may have made the earth and worlds on high, 
 
 The seeds, the germs of life, the law and all, 
 
 But I can never know that he you call 
 
 God, has a being, life, or sense, or power 
 
 To make all things, and give to man his dower 
 
 Of immortality. I cannot see 
 
 Nor feel him, though he may be near to me. 
 
 6 I see the wonders of the world around, [ground. 
 The mountains, seas, what glory clothes the 
 I see the clouds, I hear the thunders roll, 
 
 And see the earth turn round its destined pole; 
 I see the sun roll his bright orb on high, 
 And all the stars that fleck the evening sky; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 7 
 
 But in them all his form he does not show. 
 Then, that he made them, how am I to know? 
 
 Julian. 
 
 7 You naught believe, and naught, again, deny; 
 But you may know the world was never made. 
 All things were once created, is the cry, 
 And must have a Creator, so 'tis said. 
 
 Is he, of all things, first or last in grade? 
 Why, then, he made himself, is the conclusion, 
 As part of all things, either tail or head. 
 But such a thought involves in stark confusion; 
 Hence, Ernest, you, my friend, are caught in your 
 delusion. 
 
 8 If not creator of himself, why, then, 
 
 All things in being were not made by him — 
 Some thing or things were never made; and when 
 You say they were, you speak in legends dim, 
 Or contradict yourself. I never trim 
 My sentences for euphemism merely, [grim. 
 
 For truth is truth, though stark, and bald, and 
 If some things were not made, why not as clearly 
 Conclude that all things were not made, and speak 
 sincerely? 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 9 Now, Herman, give attention to my speech: 
 Have you great Caesar seen, or heard the song 
 Which Homer sang? Did vision ever reach 
 Far back as Virgil? Who the strains prolong 
 Which Homer started clear, and sweet, and 
 
 strong? 
 Have you seen London, Paris, or old Rome? 
 Or grand St. Paul, where England's thousands 
 
 throng? 
 Or have you stood beneath St. Peter's dome, 
 Where reverent multitudes for worship thronging 
 
 come? 
 
8 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 10 Did ever Milton, Raphael, rise before thee? 
 Demosthenes, invincible in foris? 
 
 Why, no. Yet you believe in Caesar's story, 
 Whose genius won him kingdoms and great 
 
 glories; 
 That Virgil sang, "Arma virumque ab oris" — 
 Sang of a falling Troy and rising Rome, 
 And told for coming youth delightful stories, 
 And that Demosthenes in his time came, [flame. 
 And scathed the tyrant Philip with his breath of 
 
 1 1 You know that Homer sang of ancient Troy, 
 And of the heroes who led on the fray, 
 And how the city fell. You do enjoy 
 
 The song. You know of England's sway; 
 Of London, her great capital alway; 
 And Paris, too, and Rome, and that great shrine 
 At which concurrent nations meet to pray; 
 Of Raphael, whose great art, almost divine, 
 Left his immortal foscoes there for aye to shine. 
 
 12 You know of Milton; his song tells his fame, 
 When earth and heaven and hades heard the 
 And gave to immortality his name. [strain, 
 How can you know that these are, or have been? 
 Why, you believe what other eyes have seen, 
 And as true witnesses the truth have told. 
 
 ou surely cannot let doubt intervene 
 Between their witness and your faith's sure hold. 
 To doubt were starkest folly unto weakness sold. 
 
 13 You say you know old poets sang those songs 
 Which fill our souls with love or hate or dread, 
 And that immortal fervor fired their tongues, 
 So that, though passed from earth, they are not 
 
 dead, 
 And speak to all who have a heart or head. 
 And yet a poem, of more wondrous worth 
 Than these old poets sang, is here outspread, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 9 
 
 And it resounds with wisdom, love and mirth; 
 You read it on the glorious face of Mother Earth. 
 
 14 It sings melodious songs to listening ears; 
 
 This landscape, clothed with russet and with 
 
 green, 
 Displays, and has displayed for untold years, 
 The sweetest poetry that e'er was seen. 
 Those rolling hills that lift their tops between 
 Us and the sky, where wood and field do meet 
 In interchange most sweet. There in the sheen 
 Of harvest sun, the meadows bare do greet 
 The plains where cattle crop the aftermath so sweet. 
 
 1 5 The fields of corn, of wheat and oats and rye, 
 Whose changing tints do bring to man the news 
 That harvest comes, her footsteps now draw nigh, 
 And sparkling lakes all show such changing views 
 As a composer frames, whose mighty muse 
 Can far outstrip the strides of mortal mind, 
 
 In poems which the immortal muses choose, 
 With measures sweet, most joyous, most refined. 
 Without an author? Why, to madness you're re- 
 signed. 
 
 16 And thou, O Julian, playest with a word, 
 Asking if God is of all things a part, 
 (And reasoning thus is always most absurd,) 
 If so he did unto himself impart 
 
 His own existence. This makes faith to start. 
 Subsistencies which do begin to be 
 Are things, as night, day, man and work, and art, 
 But all that have been from eternity, 
 As God and space, are not like things we see. 
 
 17 So when we say that God all things created, 
 We bring into our logic no confusion; 
 
 We do not thus assert what you have stated, 
 That he did make himself. Nor your conclusion 
 That things exist without him. Stark delusion! 
 
10 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 In our conception, this truth all must see — 
 If we'd escape the most complete illusion — 
 Some things created are; hence there must be 
 The increate; in this th' Creator we may see. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 1 8 But who did the Creator first create? 
 Pray tell me this, if you are e'en so wise. 
 It surely is a task by far too great, 
 
 To which your genius never can arise. 
 
 Ernest. 
 Why, surely, I have shown before your eyes 
 That there is that which never was created. 
 Why should the inference produce surprise 
 That God should be by us thus estimated, 
 And be eternal, all things to him subjugated? 
 
 19 If this world had no Makei, it must stand 
 All self-existent, and without hands reared. 
 Have you the power this thought to understand 
 Any more clearly, as it hath appeared 
 
 To your imagination? Are you cheered 
 More by it than by the sublime conception 
 Of one great God, by all to be revered, 
 For his Almighty and All-wise adeption, 
 In bringing forth creation grand to our perception? 
 
 20 With me, it is far easier to conceive 
 Of such a God who hath created all 
 That we behold around, than to believe 
 That earth and yon great dome etherial, 
 Came rolling forth from chaos, with no call 
 From some Almighty voice, or that it stands, 
 And hath stood from eternity, to fall 
 
 Into no change, held by no hands; [mands. 
 
 Such thought a myriad-tongued nature counter- 
 
 21 The crumbling mountains, heaped with fallen 
 
 debris, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 11 
 
 The changing seasons, the growth and decay 
 Of all organic nature, you must see — 
 The stars above us changing place alway, 
 And ruined worlds wrecked in some mighty fray; 
 Cities in ruins from primeval time, 
 And mighty empires that have passed away; 
 A world in revolution, rocked with crime, 
 Proclaim a universe that bows to change sublime. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 22 I do not say the world is self-existent, 
 Nor that it stands, as it has always stood, 
 Unchanged. Another theory is consistent 
 With reason sound, and I will make it good, 
 And for deep thought in this I'll give you food. 
 Matter alone is, of all things, eternal, 
 Though it may seem to change in many a mood; 
 Of all of being, mundane or supernal, 
 
 Of all phenomena, it is the cause paternal. 
 
 23 Its potencies are only self-existent, 
 
 And move, as they must move, obedient 
 To the behests of law that's all persistent. 
 And so all forms of being, in it blent, 
 Will find from these a sure development. 
 Its pristine motions, light and heat evolved; 
 By light and heat on mutual warfare bent, 
 Its mighty masses round themselves revolved, 
 And thus from chaos were the suns and worlds re- 
 solved. 
 
 24 Vast nebulae, by rapidly revolving 
 
 Around their centers, were in fragments riven, 
 And these, the smaller nebulas, evolving, 
 Formed starry systems on the cope of heaven. 
 From these were fragments by their motion 
 
 driven, 
 Which formed the star-dust for the planet groups, 
 And to these still the whirling motion given, 
 
12 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN ? 
 
 Flung off great masses, like stupendous hoops, 
 From which the planets came in glittering, dancing 
 troops. 
 
 25 These fragments, all around their centers turning, 
 Formed solid globes, by motion and attraction. 
 The central globes were with fierce fervors burn- 
 ing, 
 
 While those revolving, by their first impaction, 
 Round these were cooled by this united action. 
 Thus these formed suns, the source of light and 
 heat, [tion. 
 
 And those formed worlds, in this sublime reac- 
 Thus starry systems, starry systems meet, 
 And royal sister planets sister planets greet. 
 
 26 The center of each planetary group, 
 With its attendant planets, is but one 
 Of millions shining in each stellar troop, 
 All of which own a common central sun, 
 Around which all in widening circles run, 
 In sweep of curve we cannot estimate. 
 
 The lightning's wing that leaps across the zone 
 Of heaven, in instant, blinding flash irate, 
 Requires ten thousand years to cross a space as great. 
 
 27 And so 'tis thought that all the hosts of suns 
 Which form each stellar system have for all, 
 
 A common course, by which each system runs 
 Around some central globe monarchical, 
 Whose might makes myriad other systems fall 
 Into obedient orbits, o'er which wheel 
 These milkyways of star-dust, agminal, 
 Around himself; whose mighty periods steal 
 The white locks which the vast eternities reveal. 
 
 28 The mighty regents of these milkyways, 
 And myriads more of the same regal class, 
 Form wider systems in more grand arrays, 
 Which, in their turn, revolve around some mass 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 13 
 
 Whose vast proportions all our thoughts surpass. 
 From such as this still vaster systems roll, 
 And upward in gradations numberless, 
 Until we reach the universal whole, [goal. 
 
 Where all the starry worlds are hastening round one 
 
 29 This goal, to which the whole creation bends, 
 Is the great center of the universe. 
 
 Round it the most remotest planet trends, 
 Though soundless deeps of space do it immerse, 
 And endless ages ne'er complete its course. 
 This mighty goal, a thousand times, and more, 
 The bulk of all that over space disperse, 
 Doth bind all primal suns creation o'er, 
 And all dependent too, in thraldom evermore. 
 
 30 Tis thus by heat, evolving light and motion, 
 Combined with matter's all-attracting force, 
 That, out of giant strife and dire commotion, 
 All worlds have sprung, prepared to run their 
 
 course, 
 O'er all the endless wastes where they disperse. 
 Systems on systems rise, in aspect grand, 
 Suns roll round suns in all the universe, 
 The stars on their blue heights as sentries stand, 
 All independent of an all-creating hand. 
 
 31 When we have seen the mighty frame arise, 
 Of this vast universe without a God; 
 When every planet in its orbit flies, 
 
 All thus unguided by his sovereign rod; 
 When all the lordly suns disown his nod, 
 'Tis easy to conceive how lesser things, 
 Springing from chaos, into being plod, 
 Without his aid, while each his tribute brings 
 To all-creating force, and crowns it king of kings. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 32 Well, you have told me a surprising story, 
 Most wonderful if it were only true, 
 
14 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And, by the same triumphant allegory, 
 You'd bring the whole creation's life to view — 
 The vegetable, sentient, old and new — ■ 
 And in the train bring man's high reasoning soul, 
 Make conscience, love, hate, the same path pur- 
 sue, 
 And these small things to yield to fate's control 
 More easily than those worlds that o'er the empyrean 
 roll. 
 
 33 But what were earth, with all its great array 
 
 Of rivers, lakes and seas, and mountains grand, 
 The grass and trees, and herbs and fruits, that 
 A sentient life sustain, if there's no hand [may 
 To pluck, or hungry mouths to make demand 
 Upon them; if no sentient creature finds [land 
 In them its food? And what though sea and 
 Were full of grandest things for reasoning minds, 
 If there were wanting higher life which pleasure finds 
 
 34 In nature's scenes and voices, hills and skies! 
 What if yon sun rolls o'er the cope of heaven, 
 And systems over systems vast arise, 
 
 And to them all an endless course be given? 
 Oh, what are primal suns in splendor driven 
 Before the chariot of creative force, 
 If from this world all higher life were riven, 
 With none to mark the planets in their course, 
 And trace the laws of nature to their primal source! 
 
 35 We know that vegetable life doth crown 
 The world inanimate — indeed creation^ 
 With beauty and with glory, even down 
 
 To the minutest things; that some causation 
 Links this with life in one concatenation: 
 And sentient life crowns all below, 
 As higher still in reason's estimation, 
 Wherever life doth swim, or flit, or go, 
 In silent stream, or bosky dell, or where the breezes 
 blow. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 15 
 
 36 But the bright Kohinoor, which shines in glory 
 Upon the crown which living nature wears, 
 
 Is the reasoning soul which tells the grandest 
 
 story, 
 Which every reasoning being meetly shares— 
 The only part of nature's work that bears 
 In hand the great high chancellor's royal seal 
 Of knowledge, whose wide hidden realms she 
 
 clears; 
 That which abounds for all creations weal, 
 With which all royal men and angels ever deal. 
 
 37 We learn this soul may many worlds outweigh, 
 In scales which some assize to come may show, 
 And so could you from chaos worlds array, 
 Without a maker, you could never know 
 
 How spirit can from inert matter grow. 
 The soul is a more wonderful creation 
 Than all the rest. But yet I'd have you go 
 Through to the end of your astute narration, 
 Though more unthinkable than any revelation. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 38 The way 's so plain and easy that a fool, — 
 
 To use your Scripture language, — need not err 
 Therein, although wayfaring from the school 
 Of even your theology. Demur? 
 Then I will show the error you incur. 
 Here, now, you see is this organic germ; 
 And here are many others, notice, sir, 
 How nearly each resembles every sperm, 
 Yet all will vastly different organisms form. 
 
 39 From some wild beasts come forth, and some 
 Will take the form of birds upon the wing, 
 From others men, or apes, mayhap, will come, 
 And others still may crawling reptiles bring; 
 Thus widely different species following 
 
 From germal cells so nearly similar 
 
16 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 That strictest search, to the minutest thing, 
 Can never find the separating bar 
 Between the species, each removed from each so far. 
 
 40 You ask why this is so. I only can 
 Inform you here that such is nature's way; 
 She always has been following the same plan. 
 These germs which such unnumbered forms dis- 
 Of life, in such an infinite array, [pW 
 Inhere in matter in its primal form, 
 
 As it existed in the fiery spray, 
 From which was flung afar each starry norm, 
 Begotten in the throes of omnipresent storm. 
 
 41 As heat and light and motion have given birth 
 To worlds above, so they, to worlds below; 
 So all the forms of life upon the earth 
 
 Do from these primal agents always flow. 
 Yea, rocks and minerals the same source show, 
 And all the agents of organic life, 
 The gases, fluids, liquids, you may know, 
 Were generated in the mighty strife 
 Where heat, light, motion and attraction all were rife. 
 
 42 The vegetable world was first evolved 
 From this commotion of the primal forms, 
 From which ten thousand wonders are resolved. 
 It stood a thousand ages midst the storms 
 
 Of warring elements, and felt the harms, 
 While life and death in mutual war contended, 
 It scattered wide o'er all the earth its germs, 
 Where rapid growth and swift decay were 
 blended; — [rended. 
 
 You read its mighty records in the rocks, when 
 
 43 And thus through myriad ages stood the world, 
 In endless revolutions swiftly turning, 
 
 Until by its internal fires upwhirled, 
 
 Vast areas from its rolling bulk upspurning, [ing, 
 
 Flung here and there in the fierce conflict burn- 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 17 
 
 The seas inmixed with clouds to chaos driven, 
 All forms of organism thus inurning, 
 Thus all organic life to death was given, 
 And the vast coal beds formed where giant fires have 
 striven. 
 
 44 In these same great alembics were sublimed 
 The precious metals for the use of man. 
 And baser metals were, for him, well-timed 
 All harmonizing cunning nature's plan, 
 Thus finishing the world primordian, — 
 
 A mighty march through mighty ages trended, 
 To the grand work by the great artisan, 
 Where herb and beast and reasoning life are 
 blended, 
 All thus embodying the mighty plan intended. 
 
 45 Another wonderous epoch is begun, 
 
 And borne through lapses of uncounted ages, 
 For now the animated world comes on, 
 Leaving its foot-prints on ten thousand pages 
 Of nature's book. How it my soul engages! 
 Nature is calmed, her frightful storms are o'er; 
 She broods o'er these same life-germs; bright 
 
 presages 
 Foretell a birth more glorious than before, [shore. 
 When her full womb is riven, spread out on every 
 
 46 In her first throes wide o'er the ocean bed 
 The finny tribes innumerable came forth; 
 And in the second, forth the warblers sped, 
 Waking the groves with song all o'er the earth. 
 And in the third came creeping things to birth, 
 The wild beasts, horses, insects on the wing. 
 And every form of most intrinsic worth, 
 
 Vast wealth did, to, creating nature bring, 
 And bade the living world in joyous rapture sing. 
 
 47 And thus for ages did the work go on, 
 Uncounted generations of all kinds 
 
18 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Were born and died, and cunning nature won 
 Her trophies of the earth, the seas, the winds, 
 And left them where the curious searcher finds 
 Their dead remains, embedded in the rocks, 
 Through thousand ages, where reflecting minds 
 See nature, as her secrets she unlocks, [shocks. 
 How the old world was built, in storms and tempest 
 
 48 The first great period was closed up with fire 
 Which sublimated the organic world 
 
 To minerals, coals and gems of costly hire. 
 But in the second winds and waters swirled, 
 And no great conflagrations ever twirled 
 Their giant tongues of flame round mountains 
 grand, [hurled, 
 
 But mighty mountains from their seats were 
 By earthquakes which uplifted sea and land; 
 Yes, seas once rolled where now the hills and moun- 
 tains stand. 
 
 49 Whole continents were sunk beneath the flood, 
 Where all the living things that breathed were 
 Alter they had for myriad ages stood, [drowned, 
 And reared uncounted forms of life around. 
 When they had lain beneath the depths profound 
 For ages more; they were upraised again 
 
 By those gigantic titans under ground, 
 And, on the oozy bed of ocean's main, [grain. 
 Bloomed life again and flourished grass, and tree and 
 
 50 This was a period of gigantic storms 
 
 Before which all that we call storms are tame; 
 Tornadoes struggled o'er the world in swarms, 
 In clouds enlightened by electric flame, 
 Where thunders pealed and shook the solid frame 
 Of this great world, enclosing in black night 
 Whole provinces; and in their fierce mad game 
 Filling all living things with trembling fright, 
 Leaving wide blooming lands in sadly ruined plight. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 19 
 
 51 Then rains descended from the stormy clouds, 
 More like great cataracts they did down-pour, 
 Than like the showers that now come on in 
 
 crowds, 
 And on the shingles sing as heard of yore, 
 From the high heavens the rain with thundrous 
 
 roar 
 Came down in deluges on hill and plain. 
 While down the steeps they did their footsteps 
 In frightful canons hastening to the main, [score 
 They spread the mountains' wrecks o'er many a vast 
 champaign. 
 
 52 By such upheavals, rushing, pushing, tossing 
 Of wrangling waters o'er the softened plains, 
 Those vast deposits, underlying, crossing, 
 Were laid in strata, where the dead remains 
 Of worlds were left, as coming in their trains, 
 They lived and died along the track of ages, 
 And left the records of their mortal pains, 
 Engraved upon the endless rocky pages, 
 
 Which nature now displays to curious gaze of sages. 
 
 53 Onward and onward in the march of time 
 Through cycles lengthened till almost eternal, 
 Thus life and death went on in every clime, 
 Till nature, with a power all fresh and vernal, 
 Brooded again o'er germs with care maternal; 
 And when her womb is riven, what a birth! 
 Man, with his reasoning power and gifts supernal, 
 Came forth by myriads to o'erspread the earth, 
 
 And fill the world with song, and joy, and jocund 
 mirth 
 
 54 Yet it would be an error to suppose 
 That man's the product of a sudden birth, 
 For through gradations almost endless rose 
 This masterpiece, the offspring of the earth, 
 Shrewd nature's crown, a gem of rarest worth. 
 
20 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 In pain she travelled through ten thousand ages, 
 And suffered milliard birth-pangs ere came forth 
 This prodigy, which so our souls engages, 
 And sorely baffles all the wisdom of the sages. 
 
 55 Thus you have seen how stars and suns are made, 
 How the great world rolled out of nature's womb, 
 How starry systems rose without the aid 
 
 Of a Creator, — rose from chaos gloom: — 
 And, in this world, how life sprang from the 
 Of lower life, until the reasoning soul [tomb 
 
 Of man came forth all clad with glory's bloom; 
 How nature's forces could create the whole, 
 And bid life's mighty anthems through creation roll. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 56 So this is your most wise and wondrous story; 
 Tis thus you'd bid the universe arise, 
 
 And thus you'd crown it with its greatest glory, 
 The reasoning soul, and so, in your own eyes, 
 Your task has shown you to be wondrous wise, 
 And hence this ought to be the end of strife. 
 But I am not convinced, and I apprise 
 You of my purpose to show you that life [rife, 
 Came not thus forth, from where the lowest forms are 
 
 57 To man's high plane without a power behind 
 To push it up along the track of time. 
 
 You say it rose on plane just so inclined, 
 That in the lapse of age on age sublime, 
 It scarce had risen above its grade at prime; 
 That thus, through countless ages, it must run 
 E're it could to its present level climb, 
 Where, in its splendor, it outvies the sun, 
 It's everlasting race with deity begun. 
 
 58 To raise this life to station thus so high, 
 To nurse its pinions for such lofty flight, 
 To realms far, far above the earth and sky, 
 Demands a power far out of mortal sight; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 21 
 
 An it run ages, or is launched outright. 
 To say that mind could ere itself create, 
 Is with impossibilities bedight. 
 To say that less originates the great, 
 Is scarcely a less senseless thesis here to state, 
 
 59 For this would say effect transcends its cause, 
 Which contradicts what must be ever true, 
 And never varies in stern nature's laws. 
 
 A power sufficient must this life endue, 
 To help it such a long race to pursue, 
 Up and along such almost endless plain. 
 That it could of itself rise and subdue 
 The obstacles disputing its domain, 
 Is on our reasoning powers a most unnatural strain. 
 
 60 You tell us matter is alone eternal, 
 It is the cause of all that we behold, 
 
 Of things on earth, also of things supernal; 
 Its self-existent potencies unfold, 
 The universe in wonders yet untold. 
 And yet they move by all unchanging law 
 Which governs all their motions uncontrolled 
 By warring elements, and without a flaw. [draw. 
 None but a genius would such strange conclusion 
 
 61 You say, in their first motions, light and heat 
 Came forth, and these at war, as you relate, 
 Began the work, which did in time complete 
 The universe, immeasurably great. 
 
 They rolled great orbs out of their primal state, 
 And hung those vast and countless suns on high, 
 And round the suns to which they gravitate, 
 The planets 'gan their spinning o'er the sky, 
 As through the everlasting ages they do fly. 
 
 62 Thus rose the universe, sublime and grand, 
 Child of blind force, with no appointed time, 
 Uplifted thus, with no Creator's hand. 
 
 But tell me what these potent forces prime 
 
22 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Were doing, ere they thus began to climb [force, 
 To their high seat of power? Where was the 
 And where the law in concert thus sublime, 
 Which set the planets running in their course, 
 Ere these great movements 'gan, which you endorse? 
 
 63 Were they quiescent from eternity? 
 
 If so, what did their long quiescence break? 
 There's naught in matter but this potency, 
 Nor out of it, you say, with power to make 
 The first move this quiesence e'en to shake. 
 Hence with this potency, it would befall 
 With naught within, its energies to wake, 
 That no creation would have been at all, 
 For light and heat could not begin their carnival. 
 
 64 So if these potencies remained at rest, 
 Until their work began, naught was to make 
 Them active, as all witnesses attest. 
 
 But if these powers had always been awake, 
 And the creation rising at their beck, 
 The work began from all eternity, 
 And must have been complete without mistake 
 From all eternity, so it must be 
 As it hath always stood, unchanged, as all must see. 
 
 65 That such creation ever could have been, 
 The very words of your discourse belie it, 
 A stark impossibility is seen; 
 
 The changes we see all around deny it. 
 Your rhetoric sounds largely as you fly it, 
 Your logic halts and hobbles in the dark, 
 Your reasoning's false, you cannot verify it, 
 Your own words prove that this is nonsense 
 And folly in such wild discourses to embark, [stark, 
 
 66 You speak so often of wise Nature's plan — 
 (As if dead matter could a plan conceive) 
 In her long struggle to bring forth a man: 
 This surely is a thing hard to believe. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 23 
 
 A plan must have a planner to achieve 
 Aught that is done, with wisdom, will and might 
 To form his grand ideal, then to give 
 Power unchanging, surely to unite [bright, 
 
 With matter thus to form a world so grand, so 
 
 67 From chaos; then to launch and bid it roll, 
 On, on in glory freighted with the life 
 
 For which 'twas made, led by the reasoning soul, 
 Melodious with sweet song, with joy all rife 
 In order formed from elemental strife. 
 That mind to plan can be none less than God. 
 No other thesis can command belief: 
 The earth and heaven must bow beneath his rod, 
 And we in love or in compulsion own his nod. 
 
 68 It is strange, Julian, that you thus can reason 
 God out of his own universe so vast, [treason; 
 It seems against your reasoning powers high 
 At such false logic reason stands aghast! 
 
 An orphaned world upon existence cast! 
 Without a cause and governed sole by chance! 
 Or by blind force which scarcely can be classed 
 In higher category in advance 
 Of such mad thesis! O, 'tis full of dissonance. 
 
 69 You follow the same order we have found 
 As we describe creation, which you say 
 Has not sufficient proof. You much abound 
 In highly wrought descriptions which display 
 The action of great forces in array, 
 Without a force to start them into action. 
 You start a mighty train upon its way, 
 Without a power which, by a strong impaction, 
 
 Might start and push it onward 'gainst a great at- 
 traction. 
 
 70 If you should see a half-ton parrot shot 
 
 Go crashing through a solid buttressed wall* 
 You would conclude that man an idiot 
 
24 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Who should suggest that with no force at all 
 Behind it, such a ruin could befall; 
 So when yon planet wheels athwart the sky, 
 A hundred times more rapid than the ball, 
 He is a greater fool who will deny [fly. 
 
 That mighty power must launch it, thus to make it 
 
 71 In all our modes of reason and of thought, 
 We cannot for a moment think of motion 
 Without a mover, so some cause is sought 
 For each effect. And who can form a notion 
 Of universal matter in commotion, 
 Without some force to move it from its rest? 
 As well to think the mighty waves of ocean 
 Can roll and roar without the storm's behest, 
 
 Or the earthquake's mighty power which cannot be 
 repressed. 
 
 72 Can you conceive that those great waves are 
 
 moving 
 By an intrinsic force, as some would teach it? 
 No; when yon tidal wave, to flight behooving, 
 Comes in, it tells a story — you can reach it — 
 And no argumentation can impeach it — 
 That power outside the wave must bid it roar: 
 A force within itself could never beach it, 
 So every wave that breaks upon the shore, 
 Proclaims an outside force to start it evermore. 
 
 73 The waves of life which through uncounted ages, 
 Have cast their wrecks upon the sands of time, 
 And buried them down deep where our wise sages 
 Now find them and draw inferences sublime, 
 Of evolution, origin of species prime, 
 
 Must just the same have started by a force 
 Outside themselves. 'T would be a mighty 
 
 crime [the course 
 
 Against our reasoning powers, 't would change 
 
 Of nature to deny that they have had a higher 
 
 source. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 25 
 
 74 No matter if by evolution, one 
 Imparts its force to one that follows it, 
 There was a time when the first wave began. 
 Something uplifted this, all must admit, 
 Some force to the occasion requisite. 
 
 What was that force? Will you pretend to say 
 Some other kind of force could intromit 
 The line of sequence? Thus in one array, 
 Wrought by conversion, endless forces could have 
 play? 
 
 75 If so, their was a first force. We have seen 
 That the creation has not been forever; [been 
 And therefore, what this first force could have 
 Is the great question baffling all endeavor, 
 Unless you call it God. Without this, never 
 Can scholar know how it began to act, 
 
 For reason, sense, and all have lost their flavor 
 
 . If we explain it by a blind impact [fact. 
 
 Of dead unthinking matter; such can never be the 
 
 j6 And could you find that first force in unreason, 
 You never could explain the rising grade 
 Of life — how it could be, except with treason 
 To a priori rules, that waves be made 
 By weaker force in waves before, with aid 
 Of no external power, and that they roll 
 Higher and higher, until they do abrade [soul 
 The heights whereon is placed man's reasoning 
 
 With influence felt around the world from pole to 
 pole. 
 
 yy This theory is contrary to fact 
 
 In nature, when out on yon main the waves 
 Upraised, raise others by their own impact, 
 These die as they recede, except where raves 
 The tempest; and the shores that ocean laves 
 Which are most distant feel the least of force, 
 Which, when transmitted to them, heaves 
 
26 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN 7 
 
 Them on the shore. They could not from their 
 
 source [course. 
 
 Rise higher without increasing power along their 
 
 78 But you, my friend, would have the waves of 
 Begin, without a power to start them on, [life 
 And higher rise amidst the ceaseless strife 
 
 Of being, till they're dashed upon the throne, 
 Built that the soul might wear the crown 
 Of empire o'er all brute and sentient things. 
 Oh, how much better you and I should own 
 A God who the most ample forces brings 
 To the great work! This God my muse hencefor- 
 ward sings. 
 
 79 Something must be eternal, that is sure; 
 That something did the world originate: 
 In this we are agreed; the signature 
 
 Of universal reason doth reprobate 
 Other conclusion. Who then doth create? 
 You say eternal matter although blind. 
 On this awhile let us ratiocinate. 
 The question is just here and we shall find 
 That mind created matter or else matter mind. 
 
 80 Among the lesser things of observation, 
 You never knew, I'm sure, a single case, 
 Where mind was e'en of matter a creation, 
 But everywhere, where'er you turn your face, 
 You'll be compelled this doctrine to embrace, 
 That mind originates. Who built yon ship 
 With hoisted sail its devious way to trace? 
 
 Did dead unthinking matter it equip? [trip. 
 
 You must admit 'twas mind or else your reason 
 
 81 Think of the wondrous things the mind hath 
 
 wrought, 
 Its shrewd inventions almost numberless! 
 And, that it may embody its grand thought, 
 It guides the hand of cunning suppleness, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 27 
 
 To wield the instruments that bring success 
 To all its undertakings, cities rise, 
 All arts, all sciences that nations bless, 
 The steamship that o'er ocean swiftly flies, 
 The thundering rail train, crown its royal enterprise. 
 
 82 The face of nature's changed by mind of man, 
 Its shrewd works are in country, city, town. 
 The doings of this cunning artisan 
 
 Are everywhere. All speak its high renown; 
 All finite things do yield to it the crown. 
 If finite minds such things elaborate, 
 May not a mind that's infinite alone 
 In power, the finite mind itself create? 
 Surely, if such there be, the work is not too great. 
 
 83 And even matter, too, may have its birth 
 From mind that is thus infinite in power; 
 
 And such a power, all things speak surely forth. 
 You say you cannot think that mind has dower 
 So infinite — that man, of but an hour, 
 Can e'en conceive of such a wondrous mind. 
 Here is a clod of matter! how much lower 
 Is this than mind! And yet you say you find 
 That matter may be infinite! Surely you are blind. 
 
 84 That matter's potencies are infinite, 
 
 You say you can believe. How can it be 
 Less credible or e'en more recondite 
 That mind should reach infinity? 
 Almighty mind, so far as I can see, 
 Is just as thinkable and rational 
 As is almighty matter's potency. 
 If finite mind holds finite things in thrall, 
 May not mind infinite all things to being call? 
 
 86 And now, my friends, let me relate my story, 
 And you, Agnosticus, may judge between; 
 Tell where creation sets its crown of glory, 
 If reason or religion shall be queen. 
 
28 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 That mind which from eternity hath been, 
 
 In the beginning did all things create, 
 
 Both heaven and earth, all things unseen or 
 
 seen. 
 But darkness ruled o'er all in dismal state, 
 And earth all formless was to chaos subjugate. 
 
 86 Earth, air and ocean mingled when they came 
 From nothing into being at his command. 
 This might have been your star-dust which in 
 
 flame, 
 Broke forth and lighted up creation grand. 
 But you must see that God's Almighty hand, 
 Moved by his spirit o'er the dismal deep, 
 Gave the first impulse, as with wondrous wand, 
 Which all obedient caused the light to leap 
 Out of the darkness, and the bounds of day to keep. 
 
 87 Thus he the darkness from the day divided, 
 And called the darkness night, and light the day. 
 Now it may never yet have been decided 
 
 By man, o'er how long stretch this period lay, 
 J When God did thus creative power display. 
 One fiat might surpass the thought of sages 
 To marshall all his hosts in grand array, 
 Or it might be drawn through ten thousand ages, 
 No matter which, it naught impairs the sacred pages. 
 
 88 For with our God a myriad thousand years 
 Are as a day. This brief account doth tell 
 A wondrous tale. The story thus uprears 
 The mighty frame of the creation well. 
 
 Suns take their stations where for aye they dwell, 
 Planets go spinning round each central sun, 
 Their numbers to infinitude do swell, 
 The starry systems round their centers run, 
 And milky-ways their mighty periods have begun. 
 
 89 No matter, either, how the work was done. 
 God, in his moving on the formless deep, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 2£ 
 
 In your own way, the work may have begun, 
 Making the star-dust in vast swirls to sweep 
 Around some center, and their fragments leap 
 Out on the sky, and starry systems form 
 Upon the cope, whose sentries never sleep; 
 From these revolving comes each starry norm, 
 Begotten and brought forth in throes of mighty 
 storm. 
 
 90 These fragments might around their centers turn, 
 As you suggest, and solid globes create; 
 
 The central masses with fierce fires might burn, 
 And form the suns, with furious heat irate, 
 While those revolving round in circles great, 
 Or small, cooled by their flight, might form 
 The planets which the night irradiate, 
 Each measuring off its own appointed term, 
 As myriad million millions o'er creation swarm. 
 
 91 The stars might be arranged in stellar troops 
 Of millions in each glittering milky-way, 
 Each rolling round its center as it stoops 
 From heights immeasurable, as you say, 
 
 In sweep of curve so vast that sunlight's ray 
 Would centuries consume in journeying 
 Across the space, and suns themselves grow gray, 
 In their long race around their starry king, 
 While to his throne they all their strength and honor 
 bring. 
 
 92 These kings might into wider systems group, 
 And own some king of kings whose regal power 
 Would make ten thousand in obedience stoop, 
 As they around him in wide circles soar. — 
 
 A thousand milky ways, creation's dower, 
 Might thus around some common center sweep, 
 And other wider systems might rise o'er 
 These wide revolving galaxies, and keep 
 Their stations infinite upon the boundless deep. 
 
30 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN f 
 
 93 But there can surely be no central sphere 
 Around whieh all created worlds may run. 
 Creation hath its center everywhere, 
 For it is boundless. Nowhere is begun 
 
 Its measuring-line, and nowhere is it done; 
 Hence nowhere hath it a eircumference. 
 So it can have, you see, no central sun, 
 Wide as the sweep of God's omnipotence, 
 That only can hold all things in obedience. 
 
 94 This might have been the method of creation, 
 How God divided darkness from the night, 
 By which he bade each sun to take its station, 
 And sped each planet on its whirling flight. 
 The first great stage is ended ; day and night 
 Are thus begun. And thus God's spirit moved 
 Upon the deep's dark face; his sovereign might, 
 In those tremendous movements, was approved 
 
 Full strong for all that this vast work behooved. 
 
 95 It was these movements at His high behest, 
 Who said, Let there be light, and light there was — 
 That did those flaming suns with light invest. 
 The same great Power that gave the suns their 
 Was of the rolling planets the great cause. [laws 
 And thus the suns and planets may have stood 
 For ages, gathering form; and then the pause, 
 As order had sprung up from chaos rude, 
 
 When the Creator called his mighty works all good. 
 
 96 Thus there was evening; morning, too, there was; 
 And it was called the first day. Now you'll know 
 We change the scene from great to small; we pass 
 From suns and systems whose increasing glow 
 Lights up the sky, to this small world below. 
 
 We find it from its parent matter torn, 
 And to its central orb obedient bow; 
 In fire and strife its elements do burn, 
 And as it flies it doth upon its axis swiftly turn. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 31 
 
 97 This period laid down the primal rocks 
 As the foundation of the solid world, 
 
 And built on this, it stands the tempests' shocks, 
 And scarcely to destruction can be hurled, 
 Though nature into fiercest strife be whirled. 
 But now the second day comes on amain, 
 When the blue-bannered heavens were unfurled, 
 For God now spake his word of power again, 
 And did the firmament, the aerial heaven, ordain. 
 
 98 The firmament the waters did divide; 
 
 Seas rolled below and floods above did form 
 In misty cohorts on the clouds to ride, 
 Drawn by the winds in chariot of the storm, 
 While tempest demons o'er the heavens did swarm. 
 Before this era heat was so intense 
 That air and water had no sectile term, 
 For all the waters of the main immense, 
 Were held in steamy mist, and could not yet condense. 
 
 99 But as creation moved in stages on, 
 
 The boiling chaos cooled, the mists condensed, 
 And gathering floods come pouring down anon, 
 As if all demons of the air incensed, 
 With their wild hissing their fierce wrath evinced. 
 A myriad Niagaras down thundered, 
 The surging floods were o'er the world dispensed. 
 Thus the great oceans from the skies were sun- 
 dered, 
 And o'er the roaring deeps the Sovereign stood and 
 pondered. 
 
 100 This separating epoch may have lasted 
 
 A million years before the work was done; 
 Yet, through its fearful tempests were forecasted, 
 The time when life should from the strife be won. 
 All while the second day its course did run, 
 The earth was by the oceans overspread. 
 Then wild and restless billows seethed upon 
 
32 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 The earth's whole surface, then their heated bed, 
 While wildest, fiercest turmoils o'er the deeps were 
 sped. 
 
 101 This stormy period may antedate 
 
 Your lengthened period of gigantic storms 
 A myriad ages — though the space seems great — 
 When seas and skies did feel the dread alarms, 
 As wild tornadoes swept the seas in swarms, 
 When' neath the deeps the earthquakes thun- 
 dered on, 
 And spouted to the skies their fearful harms, 
 When tidal waves in mountains high might run, 
 And naught but tempests rage o'er all beneath the sun. 
 
 102 Thus God imparted motion that divided 
 The light from darkness during the first day, 
 And on the second 'twas by him provided 
 That water from the expanse should pass away, 
 Below, to seethe in seas, above in spray; 
 From whence, again, in dews and rains to fall. 
 And while these waters o'er creation lay, 
 Those rocks were formed which men of science 
 
 call 
 The metamorphic rocks, which scarcely know decay. 
 
 103 Thus oceans covered all the face of earth, 
 Resting upon a soft and oozy bed; 
 
 It was before the mountains had their birth, 
 Before a single hill had raised its head, 
 And e'en before the prairies were outspread. 
 The crust of earth was soft and yielding yet; 
 Hence no foundations could as yet be laid, 
 On which those mighty giants could be set, 
 Although the earthquake e'en those giants might 
 beget. 
 
 104 Thus the expanse was spread above the seas 
 Which we call air, and many, the first heaven. 
 This is the home of stormy wind or breeze, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 33 
 
 And to the world the gases it hath given 
 Which nourish life, tho' they for long had striven 
 To free themselves in nature's pangs of birth. 
 Thusfrom it came,when nature's womb was riven, 
 The breath of life, which all upon the earth 
 Must breathe, or being here would be of little worth. 
 
 l D$ Thus, overlaying the titanic rocks 
 
 Which were sublimed amidst primeval fire,. 
 Of sediment thrown down by nature's shocks, 
 Piled on the ocean's bed in oozy mire, 
 Those rocks were formed which, rising higher 
 
 and higher 
 Through the long ages of the second day, 
 Did thus an unknown height or depth acquire, 
 And hardened in the long, hot, fiery fray, 
 
 They did the strong foundations of the mountains lay. 
 
 106 The second day came to its murky close, 
 The second separation was complete, 
 
 And now the light of the third morning rose 
 Which brought a day with changes all replete — 
 A day which thousand ages scarce could mete. 
 It was another day of great dividing, 
 Which did the vision of all watchers greet, 
 When all the waters, from the land subsiding, 
 Were to their places gathered, there to be abiding. 
 
 107 Great earthquakes, striving 'neath the hardened 
 
 crust [waves, 
 
 Of earth, raised mighty plains from 'neath the 
 While others quite as great were downward 
 
 thrust, 
 To find beneath the deeps their watery graves. 
 Then all these sunken plains that ocean paves, 
 O'erwhelmed by mighty floods, Jehovah named 
 The seas. The lengthened coasts which ocean 
 
 laves 
 
34 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 He called the land. Thus He the islands 
 
 framed, [claimed. 
 
 And earth's great continents his mightier power pro- 
 
 108 A new creation now must come to birth — 
 New impulse must be given to the train 
 Which labored up the grade of life. The earth 
 Was now prepared for tree and grass and grain. 
 And so, at God's command, on every plain 
 The tree, the grass, the grain sprang up in glory, 
 And verdant spring began her joyous reign 
 
 All nature told a glad and wondrous story 
 Of a creating God, though with no auditory. 
 
 109 You say that after suns and worlds came forth, 
 And took their stations on the cope of heaven, 
 When mighty change had fitted up the earth 
 For the conception, to her womb was given 
 The germs of life, and when her womb was riven, 
 She brought to birth the vegetable world. 
 This stood a thousand ages, then was driven 
 To dire commotion and to ruin hurled, 
 
 Midst stark destruction on the eddying tempest 
 swirled. 
 
 1 10 To this I dare assent; this period 
 
 Of warring elements felt frightful harms. 
 The earth was in the crucible of God, 
 Rocked in the cradle of tremendous storms; 
 For then the hills and mountains in vast swarms 
 Were torn from nature's womb and heaved on 
 
 high, 
 Midst subterranean tempest's dread alarms, 
 As warring giants heaped them to the sky. 
 Sure, midst such dire convulsions, all of life must die. 
 
 111 The third day of creation now was done, 
 And all organic being here was ended; 
 
 For when down to its rest had sunk the sun, 
 It left the world from flames all undefended. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 35 
 
 So seas and skies again in strife were blended; 
 Deeps boiling were flung upward to the sky 
 By raging fires where earth's thick crust was 
 
 rended. 
 No wonder, sure, that trees and plants should die, 
 And leave their wide-spread ruins in the rocks to lie. 
 
 112 Your first great period of organic life, 
 Embraces our third day of the creation. 
 
 You may be right that in its long, fierce strife, 
 Some minerals and coal had their formation, 
 For they were formed by burning vegetation. 
 Your science and my Bible are agreed 
 In this most wonderful concatenation, 
 And you will find this true, as we proceed, 
 That science in religion finds her richest mead. 
 
 113 The fourth great epoch of creation rose 
 Upon a world to widest chaos driven: 
 
 No forms of life could flourish till its close. 
 To bring back order this long day was given; 
 And as the world, which in the strife was riven, 
 Again sought rest and order in the gloom, 
 The clouds were cleared which veiled the cope 
 
 of heaven, 
 And bade the sun and moon in glory come, 
 To find in the blue sky their everlasting home. 
 
 114 You tell us in your scientific story, [o'er," 
 "Nature was calmed — her frightful storms were 
 
 After these storms had blasted her first glory; 
 But you must give her ages, less or more, 
 To find a perfect rest from storms so sore, 
 To fit her for another great gestation; 
 Prepared to spread abroad on every shore 
 A higher life, more perfect in creation. 
 This fourth day marks the time of her long incubation. 
 
 115 This done, your wondrous epoch then begun, 
 Which, borne through lapses of uncounted ages, 
 
36 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Brought forth a life which found its crown in man. 
 It left its footprints on ten thousand pages 
 Of nature's book. It well your soul engages. 
 The fifth day of creation thus arose, 
 Glowing with light and full of bright presages, 
 Of mighty things created ere its close, 
 A long and busy day before the night's repose. 
 
 116 God spake the word, wide o'er the ocean's bed 
 The finny tribes innumerable came forth, 
 
 He spake again and wide the warblers sped, 
 Waking the groves with songs all o'er the earth. 
 Thus through long ages fishes had their birth 
 Beneath the wave and birds were on the wing, 
 Before the higher forms of greater worth 
 Did to creating power their treasures bring, 
 Who then could make the hills and woods and mea- 
 dows ring. 
 
 117 Yet there was turmoil, sinking and upheaval 
 Of continent and island, hill and plain, 
 
 Great changes from the form of earth primeval, 
 Whole provinces were sunk beneath the main, 
 And when they in the depths profound had lain 
 For age on ages, they arose once more, 
 And, on the ocean's oozy bed again, 
 Life bloomed anew, the tree, the plant, the 
 flower, [bower. 
 
 And feathered warblers filled again each verdant 
 
 118 Thus closed the fifth great period of creation, 
 Which filled with life the waters and the air; 
 The sixth came in with equal alternation 
 
 Of storm and calm, of seasons rough and fair, 
 When mighty changes claimed their ample share. 
 God spake the word of power to brooding earth, 
 And she brought forth again her wonders rare, 
 The living creature now might come to birth, 
 Insects and creeping things, and kine, all of rare 
 worth. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 37 
 
 119 You said this work for ages did go on, 
 Uncounted generations of all kinds 
 
 Were born and died, and fruitful nature won 
 Her trophies from the seas, the earth, the winds, 
 And left them where the curious searcher finds, 
 Their dead remains imbedded in the rocks, 
 Through thousand ages, where reflecting minds 
 See nature as her secrets she unlocks, 
 And tells how earth was built midst storms and 
 tempest's shocks. 
 
 120 Agreed to this if science tells you so, 
 
 If in the rocks such records you can find, 
 It ne'er conflicts with records we can show, 
 The records which bespeak the eternal mind — 
 Who fails to see them surely must be blind. 
 So far as science has explored the earth, 
 It has our bible records countersigned, 
 As it from chaos leads creation forth: 
 It tells us the same story from its wondrous birth. 
 
 121 Your second period of organic life, 
 Bringing to birth the animate creation, 
 Which nature tells us was so full of strife 
 Of Titan powers at work on the formation 
 
 Of this great world, finds its grand explication, 
 In these two last great periods here set forth, 
 When life moved upward, on its long gradation, 
 From lowest forms which first o'erspread the 
 earth 
 To man who, in his glory, last came to his birth. 
 
 122 The forms of life which rose and passed away, 
 Are quite innumerable, all shapes, 
 
 All grades and species, all must have their day, 
 From the huge monsters rolling in the deeps, 
 To infusoria, whose kingdom sweeps 
 Through all the waters of the world below; 
 From the minutest thing that flies or creeps, 
 
38 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 To the great mammoth, whose vast bulk may 
 show, 
 That even a great mountain on all fours can go. 
 
 123 These, midst the turmoil of the forming world 
 Game forth and lived and greatly multiplied, 
 Until whole species were to ruin hurled, 
 
 By great catastrophes, and where they died, 
 Came other forms for ages to abide, 
 In numbers numberless, in generations 
 That never can be counted, they supplied 
 The records of innumerable creations 
 Of genera and species, in infinite gradations. 
 
 124 Twas as you say, a period of storms, 
 Before which all that we call storms are tame, 
 Tornadoes struggled o'er the world in swarms, 
 In clouds enlightened by electric flame, [frame 
 Whence thunders pealed and shook the solid 
 Of the great world, enclosing in black night, 
 Whole provinces and in their fierce, mad game, 
 Filling all living things with trembling fright, 
 
 Leaving wide blooming lands in sadly ruined plight. 
 
 125 And rains descended from the stormy clouds, 
 More like great cataracts they did down-pour, 
 Than like the showers which now come on in 
 
 crowds, 
 And on the shingles sing, as heard of yore. 
 From the high heavens the rains, with thundrous 
 
 roar, 
 Came down in deluges on mount and plain, 
 While down the steeps they did their foot-steps 
 
 score 
 In frightful chasms, hasting to the main; 
 They spread the mountain's wrecks o'er many avast 
 
 champaign. 
 
 126 By such upheavals, rushing, pushing, tossing, 
 The uneasy waters o'er the softened plains, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 39 
 
 Those vast deposits underlying, crossing, 
 Were laid in strata where the dead remains 
 Of worlds were left as, coming in their trains, 
 They lived and died along the track of ages, 
 And left the records of their mortal pains, 
 Engraved upon those endless rocky pages, 
 Which science now displays to curious gaze of sages. 
 
 127 Thus, in the words with which you tell your 
 How the creation rose without a God, [story, 
 I will exalt the great Creator's glory, 
 
 And show how all things own his sovereign nod. 
 As seas divided neath the prophet's rod, 
 So at the beck of his Almighty hand, 
 Order, from chaos, light from darkness stood, 
 From water air came, from the seas the land, 
 As spread in plains abroad or reared in mountains 
 grand. 
 
 1 28 Thus did the waves of life rise higher and higher, 
 Until their crests were dashed upon the throne, 
 Where man sits warmed by that ethereal fire, 
 Which clothes him with a radiance not his own, 
 Through which from heaven a light divine hath 
 
 shone. 
 Man is the link uniting heaven and earth: 
 The earth aspiring, heaven stooping down, 
 Were joined in union at his wondrous birth, 
 In the image of his God, in glory, he came forth. 
 
 129 Thus, onward, onward, in the march of time, 
 Through cycles lengthened till almost eternal, 
 Did life and death go on in every clime, 
 
 Till nature's quickened womb all fresh and 
 vernal, [maternal, 
 
 At God's command, throbbed with sharp pangs 
 
 And when her womb was riven, lo! the birth! 
 
 The man came forth with powers and gifts 
 supernal. 
 
40 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN'/ 
 
 His body fashioned from the dust of earth, 
 His mind the breath of God, a thing of wondrous 
 worth. 
 
 130 Yet it might be an error to suppose 
 His body sprang out of a sudden birth, 
 For through gradations almost endless rose, 
 This masterpiece, best offspring of the earth, 
 Which twines her brow with crown of rarest 
 
 worth. [trod, 
 
 In pain through millions years she might have 
 And suffered milliard pangs to bring it forth, 
 A temple fashioned from a senseless clod, 
 Built for the soul immortal from the hand of God. 
 
 131 O! if to build this dwelling for the soul, 
 Nature through almost endless ages wrought, 
 Till all resources under her control, 
 
 Had been exhausted, e'en before she brought 
 This model to perfection, O, how fraught 
 With wondrous interest that soul must be! 
 We may not wonder at the startling thought, 
 That it shall live through vast eternity. [sea. 
 Launched for a voyage for aye on life's unbounded 
 
 132 We find a fact here never found before, 
 
 On which your boasted science has been dumb, 
 That the old world stood, as it stood of yore, 
 For ages while earth's life so painful clomb 
 Its height that it might build the soul a home. 
 The form of love eternal brooded o'er 
 Chaos' wide wastes and stirred its mighty womb, 
 It throbbed responsively in labor sore 
 Through almost endless ages, till this fruit it bore. 
 
 133 'Twas matter, moved by all embracing love, 
 That sought by this responsive love to show, 
 To raise itself from its low plain, above 
 
 To where a heavenly life could through it flow. 
 This was a problem only God could know, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 41 
 
 To wed the spirit to an earthly mould — 
 Make the material with ethereal glow — 
 Hence, through great changes never to be told, 
 It must be wrought while thousand cycles were un- 
 rolled. 
 
 134 At first the worlds were scattered o'er the sky 
 But barren worlds, by storms and earthquakes 
 When all the elements at random fly, [rended, 
 Where earth, air, fire and water all are blended, 
 For the immortal soul from God descended, 
 Formed not a safe and happy dwelling place. 
 E'en when the expanse above the seas was 
 
 bended, 
 And earth did from the land the waters chase, 
 Not yet could nature's arms the immortal soul em- 
 brace. 
 
 135 And when in pangs, moved by the power of God, 
 The earth brought forth the trees, the grass, 
 
 the flowers, 
 And clad her hills and plains with verdant sod, 
 Though it abounded in elysian bowers, 
 The soul with all its varied gifts and powers, 
 Found not in these a place to make its home. 
 Though they bestowed on earth such precious 
 
 dowers, 
 Bound to their place, they could notgo and come, 
 It could not dwell in these, so wont afar to roam. 
 
 136 Thus, though the earth stood through a myriad 
 
 ages, [died, 
 
 While these bright forms of beauty lived and 
 And though she thus wrote out uncounted pages 
 Of her long history, yet she supplied 
 No house in which the deathless soul could bide. 
 So as if in the sheerest desperation, 
 She hurled her works in wrecks on every side, 
 She broke the moulds of life's first great creation 
 And wrapped the whole in a great conflagration. 
 
42 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 137 Again as if repenting her rash act, 
 
 She sought to rear for mind another dwelling; 
 She would from ruin thus her work retract, 
 The riot of destructive forces quelling, 
 The mists and shadows from her face dispelling, 
 She would assay another new creation, 
 Order out of chaotic broils compelling, 
 A bright thought seized her in her cogitation, 
 She would restore to life again her vegetation. 
 
 138 This should be food for what she'd now create. 
 So, in the throes of other parturition, 
 
 She labored and a world all animate 
 With busy life came forth as the fruition: 
 All living things of every condition, 
 Fishes and birds and reptiles in their turn, 
 And cattle came to the great exposition, 
 To bring a form that could the soul incarn 
 To rear a fane wherein ethereal fire might burn. 
 
 13.9 But not in lower, humbler forms of life, 
 Could nature build a dwelling for the soul, 
 Though in her work unnumbered forms were 
 As in the lists she millions did enroll, [rife 
 
 Up through gradations countless, till the whole 
 Creation animate passed in review, 
 With all its species, ranks and orders full. 
 But though from old forms she brought forth 
 the new [endue. 
 
 In countless grades, God would not these with soul 
 
 140 That dwelling must have brain, and heart, and 
 hand, 
 With form of symmetry and strength combined, 
 To be endued with power to command, 
 All living beings subject to the mind. [find 
 
 Now, since in things yet made she could not 
 A being with such rare endowments crowned, 
 To one more parturition she resigned 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 43 
 
 Herself; moved by the love of God profound, 
 She labored and brought forth the man to be en- 
 throned. 
 
 141 Here was a temple reared by nature's pain, 
 A dwelling meet for the immortal mind, 
 With feet to bear it over hill and plain, 
 With hands to do whatever it inclined, 
 
 With nerve and brain-cells wondrously refined, 
 The seat and highways of its wondrous powers, 
 With senses, windows for the soul designed. 
 This offering, God received as nature's dower, 
 And man became a living soul in that same hour. 
 
 142 You say that I with Moses disagree, 
 
 That he says God formed man from dust of earth. 
 But there's no difference twixt him and me, 
 God's love moved nature's powers to give man 
 
 birth, 
 And so as other beasts she brought him forth; 
 Then God breathed into him his breath of life, 
 And hence the living soul of wondrous worth, 
 With startling faculties and instincts rife, 
 The crown which God bestows on nature's long- 
 drawn strife. 
 
 143 The struggle of the ages thus hath been 
 That matter stirred by the Eternal Spirit, 
 Might lift itself to where it could begin 
 Existence which for aye it should inherit, 
 To take the crown of endless life and wear it. 
 Thus the great problem of the eternal mind, 
 Was how the soul might matter take and bear it, 
 How substance could with spirit life be joined, 
 
 And earth and heaven unite in concord well defined. 
 
 144 Earth lifted up his body from the ground, 
 Heaven stooping, clothed it with immortal mind, 
 And thus it was with life eternal crowned; 
 This was the consummation erst designed 
 
44 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 By the Omniscient thought, for here we find 
 The crowning glory of all things on earth, 
 To whose command all nature was assigned, 
 For whom the earth and all things were brought 
 forth, 
 The subjects of a king of wide power and rare worth. 
 
 145 The masterpiece of earth and heaven combined, 
 What wondrous wisdom did his body frame! 
 The grosser elements in him refined 
 
 To do a service of angelic fame, 
 And wear the signet of the eternal name. 
 It is the outcome of Omniscient thought, 
 Warmed into life by an ethereal flame, 
 Behold and see what the Great Thinker wrought 
 When he from senseless matter this great wonder 
 brought. 
 
 146 Then God pronounced his finished work all good, 
 As he his wide creation did survey, 
 
 With man who at the grand head center stood, 
 No wonder that, as Hebrew scriptures say, 
 He rested from his work the seventh day, 
 In a divine complaisance o'er his long 
 Task drawn through ages in such grand array. 
 Hark ! hear the morning stars break forth in song, 
 And all the sons of God their joyous shouts prolong. 
 
 147 These angels sang, for they had seen the hand 
 That framed the world which now before them 
 ^ lay, 
 
 Saw the great wisdom which the scheme had 
 
 planned, 
 And how it did Almighty power display, 
 To roll the earth from chaos on its way. 
 Saw how Omniscience the grand end did scan, 
 While those uncounted ages passed away, 
 And ripened what you call wise nature's plan, 
 From tlowers into the glorious fruitage we call man. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 45 
 
 148 My dear Agnostic, did you ever see [Slave?" 
 Our Powers' unrivaled work called the "Greek 
 And have you tried to think how it could be, 
 That cold and lifeless stone could e'er engrave 
 A form so exquisite, and never crave 
 
 Help from without? Why no, you answer, no! 
 
 A thought like this is worse than madman's rave, 
 
 That matchless form a deathless thought doth 
 
 show, [know. 
 
 And thought must have a thinker any fool should 
 
 149 And more than this, you know at the first sight, 
 In that great work of art you read the man 
 Who shaped it, seeing in the clearest light, 
 What he must be. A mind to form the plan 
 He must possess, and reasoning power to scan 
 The model and the means to give it being, 
 From first to last, and skill of artisan, 
 
 With hands to execute and eyes for seeing, 
 And will with all these varied faculties agreeing. 
 
 1 50 Look on that work of wonder yet again 
 
 And see what more the sculptor must have been. 
 Her form is nude before the gaze of men, 
 But triple robe of linen white and clean [chin 
 Or ermined robe dropped downward from the 
 In which white justice oft is meetly shown, 
 Could guard the groveling soul from thoughts 
 
 of sin, 
 Not better than that sweet unsullied crown 
 Of modesty which he has o'er her features thrown. 
 
 151 That holy shrinking from the vulgar gaze, 
 Constrained against her will in chains to stand, 
 Would quench the satyr's lust in hottest blaze, 
 As infamous all his base thoughts would brand, 
 And to a holy reverence all command. 
 
 Her shrinking features may show grief and pain, 
 At helplessness so bound in foot and hand, 
 
46 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And fear of what may be, you see thus plain, 
 But her great pain is that she stands your gaze pro- 
 fane. 
 
 152 The whole work is an eloquent appeal 
 To sympathy for beauty in distress; 
 
 It forces the most stoic heart to feel 
 The power of passion, men would not repress, 
 Bound in a spell, which they must fain confess, 
 By look and gesture and protracted stay. 
 Think of the faculties he must possess, 
 Who, by his art can keep vile lust at bay, 
 And give the noblest passions free and fullest play. 
 
 153 He must have love for virtue in his soul, 
 To clothe with so impalpable a veil 
 
 A form thus nude, that it may lust control: — 
 A power of eloquence that cannot fail, 
 Over the tenderest passions to prevail; 
 And purity of heart to give expression 
 To form so pure; and pity to detail 
 Features so pitiful. All men's confession 
 Must be that all these gifts and more are his pos- 
 session. 
 
 154 Now, standing by this matchless work of art, 
 You study it with wonder and with awe, 
 And every feature captivates your heart. 
 Yet you within you find a changeless law 
 That bids you from it these conclusions draw, — 
 This is a work, I know that some one wrought it. 
 Effect shows cause, is law without a flaw; 
 This work shows thought, I know that some one 
 
 thought it, [fought it. 
 
 I know that this is truth though all the world had 
 
 155 Now where did Powers get his unmatched ideal; 
 The pattern after which the work was made — 
 For all true art must copy what is real? 
 From thousand forms of beauty he sought aid, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 47 
 
 Selecting features of the highest grade 
 Of excellence from each; he then combined 
 Them all in one where each should all pervade. 
 Thus grasping his ideal in his mind, 
 He sought from it his clayey prototype to find. 
 
 156 From that he shaped the marble so divine, 
 Though copied from the patterns nature fur- 
 nished, [shine? 
 
 What light doth from that matchless statue 
 Is it inherent flowing out untarnished? 
 Is 't by reflection on the surface burnished? 
 Does intellect shine out from marble balls? 
 Is thought upon that pensive brow but gar- 
 nished? 
 Does love in that cold bosom answer calls 
 Of love? Does warm affection dwell in stony 
 halls? 
 
 157 The light is but reflected from that form; 
 From other source its pensive rays must shine, 
 Another's soul must the cold marble warm; 
 Thought must come from a being more divine, 
 And love must e'en to warmer breast incline, 
 If passion makes those features pitiful, 
 
 It is another's fire upon the shrine; 
 Another head must find for mind a school, 
 Thought, love nor hate can dwell in marble cold 
 and dull. 
 
 1 58 And you will say that man is mad or blind, 
 Who says that marble wonder could have grown 
 From its inherent tendencies inclined, 
 
 To come together by force all their own, 
 'Twould be unthinkable and set the crown 
 Of idiocy on him who should e'en dare, 
 Such fool's most strange hypothesis propone, 
 To reason with his folly none would care, 
 A merited oblivion such as he must share. 
 
48 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 159 Yet here's a thing as perfect as divine, 
 
 In form and feature in each sharp detail, [shine, 
 It lives and breathes and from it light doth 
 Born from within, with intellect all hale, 
 And flowing out from that behind the veil, 
 Through beaming eyes all glittering with life; 
 And thought, which e'en the highest heaven 
 
 may scale, 
 Sits regnant on the brow, and love's fond strife 
 Heaves in a bosom with the warm affections rife 
 
 160 As if the sculptor had the power to make 
 That statue live and breathe and hear and see, 
 And walk, and eat and drink, and sleep and 
 And all that is a living thing to be, [wake, 
 Yea more, all that can shine most gloriously, 
 From man that has within himself a soul, 
 Where all his wondrous faculties agree 
 
 To make him perfect man, and can control 
 Thought, knowledge, wisdom, love, hate, joy and 
 sorrow's dole, — 
 
 161 With hope and faith and reason reigning queen, 
 With warm imagination that can soar, 
 
 To highest realms of beauty where are seen 
 Great things unspeakable; that can brood o'er 
 Immensities and tread the lengthened shore 
 Of vast eternities, endued with speech 
 To talk with God; with eye that can explore 
 The mighty skies, unbounded heights to reach, 
 And tell the wondrous things which suns and planets 
 teach, — 
 
 162 That may dive into mighty deeps that lie 
 Hid in the labyrinths of the creation, 
 "Weave garlands from the lightnings" of the sky 
 To crown the offspring of imagination, — 
 
 Or with his wondrous hand in subjugation, 
 To hold or launch them forth, like thundering 
 Jove, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 49 
 
 O'er highways that in one concatenation, [move 
 Bind the whole earth and bid his thoughts to 
 In thunderbolts, his matchless faculties to prove. 
 
 163 Now tell me, Julian, tell me here, I pray, 
 Which is the greater work? that marble thing 
 Of beauty, cold and lifeless as the clay 
 
 That formed its prototype, or man the king, 
 That rules the world its forces gathering, 
 Within his hand to hold them 'neath his sway? 
 To sculpture, or to sculptor shall we bring 
 A chaplet, for the temples, made of bay? 
 Let that be crowned which does the grandest tho't 
 display. 
 
 164 What do you say? That statue dead and cold 
 And motionless and passionless, 'tis sure, 
 Must have a maker! Yet you're bold 
 
 .To say this living thing with signature 
 Of thought divine on every feature pure, 
 Where wheels within wheels do reveal a plan 
 Of wondrous complication, yet secure 
 To reach the end ordained! You say it can 
 Exist without a maker! O most senseless man! 
 
 165 What kind of reason yours, my friend, can be, 
 To me is scarce conceivable, to paddle 
 
 From fact to such a stark absurdity! 
 That must, this can not have a maker ! Twaddle ! 
 Such reasoning the strongest brains should addle. 
 It was the fool who said, Man hath no Maker. 
 Powers had for his great work a perfect model; 
 He wrought to that, a wonderful pains-taker — 
 Wrought long until, perfected, it could be his speaker. 
 
 166 A model, too, our Maker had for man, 
 From the beginning, kept within his mind; 
 Nature, inspired by him, wrought to that plan — 
 Wrought on through age on ages undefined, 
 Until her work by God's right hand was signed 
 
50 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 As perfect; then he breathed his breath into it. 
 Hence living man with deathless soul enshrined 
 In living sculpture, thus did God endue it: 
 His work, with his own radiant image shining thro* it. 
 
 167 As that stone form speaks forth the mind of 
 
 Powers, 
 So this live form speaks forth the mind of God. 
 If at that shrine mad skepticism cowers, 
 At this it should be blasted with the nod 
 Of Him who sways creation with his rod; 
 For if that speaketh with a hundred tongues 
 Of him who formed it, this framed from a clod, 
 With million tongues the utterance prolongs, 
 As witnesses for God, in vast, uncounted throngs. 
 
 168 If thought, will, wisdom and imagination 
 Conspired to give that matchless marble birth, 
 A grander thought and mighter causation 
 Has built this from the groveling dust of earth; 
 If human skill shaped that of such rare worth, 
 Almighty wisdom, skill and power combined 
 Has only brought this wondrous offspring forth. 
 A temple, throbbing with immortal mind, 
 
 Proclaims that God is he who this great work designed. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE NEW CREATION. 
 
 [Herman, Julian and Ernest.] 
 Herman. 
 Well, we have wandered from the theme we started, 
 Clear out of sight of it we have departed; 
 You both have soared to regions most sublime, 
 And matched yon measures with the march of time, 
 Which marked a lapse of almost endless ages, 
 And wrote its records on uncounted pages 
 Of nature's book; upon the sky of heaven, 
 And on the rocks which are revealed when riven. 
 
 One claims creation rose without a God, 
 And moves on, independent of his nod; 
 The other that he made the heaven and earth, 
 And brought all being by his power to birth. 
 If one is right, the other must be wrong, 
 Though both have sung a most majestic song. 
 Which may be right I'll not pretend to say — 
 Will not decide it till another day. 
 
 Let us return and see if we can find 
 
 A clue to this deep labyrinth, the mind. 
 
 Is it the music that flows from the lyre? 
 
 Is it the blaze that rises from the fire? 
 
 Or is it mind that strikes the harp's sweet strings, 
 
 And from it life's most grand cantata brings? 
 
 Is it the fire that makes creation blaze, 
 
 Revealing God in his great works and ways? 
 
52 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 4 Is matter, Janus-faced, a unity 
 Which Tyndall, with a hoped impunity, 
 Would teach — one side with figure and extension, 
 Inertia, too, and color in convention — 
 
 The other the reverse, the cause of motion, 
 With neither tint nor form? Can such a notion 
 Be true? A tintless tint, a formless figure, 
 A moveless motion and a powerless vigor! 
 
 5 Who e'er created mind? Is it immortal? 
 Can it survive and pass death's gloomy portal? 
 All these are questions of tremendous reach; 
 To answer them, has any mortal speech? 
 Your telescopes have pierced the skyey deeps, 
 And yet the sky, I fear, the secret keeps; [found, 
 You've searched the rended depths of earth pro- 
 And yet the secret stays beneath the ground. 
 
 6 I see yon rolling orbs fade from the sky, 
 
 I see all living nature fall and die; [sing, 
 
 The flowers that bloom, the birds that sweetly 
 The flocks and herds do all for tribute bring 
 Their lives, and lay them sadly at the feet 
 Of the dread king of terrors. All must meet 
 This fateful monster, and before him fall, 
 So man obeys the same relentless call. 
 
 7 How can you know the soul survives that fate, 
 Since all terrestrial beings, small and great, 
 Must die, and from our vision pass away? 
 Oh! if there be a soul, tell me, I pray, 
 
 How it escapes the hapless wrecks of Time, 
 And soars, on noiseless wings, to heights sublime, 
 Above the reach of Thunder-cloud, that rolls, 
 O'er all material things beneath the poles. 
 
 8 'Twould be a most delightful thing, I know, 
 If you a future life could clearly show, — 
 
 A life eternal, free from all the ills 
 
 With which our destined fate existence fills. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 53 
 
 I send the question to the bending sky, 
 But the blue deeps send hither no reply; 
 I ask the stars that shine beyond the deep, 
 But they, in silence, still the secret keep. 
 9 I breathe the question on the viewless wind, 
 Still no responses does my question find; 
 I asked old sages this same thing to show, 
 If answer they send back, it must be, no! 
 They strongly wished and hoped that this might 
 But they have failed to make it sure to me: [be, 
 Merely to hope that after death we live, 
 Without assurance, little joy can give. 
 
 10 I asked a Christian, on her dying bed, 
 If on her darkness any light was shed; 
 With eyes upraised to heaven, she said to me, — 
 "Bright worlds! bright worlds! O, the bright 
 
 worlds I see ; " 
 I looked if angels should her soul convoy, 
 To those bright worlds of everlasting joy; 
 I listened for the chariot that should bear 
 Her soul to heaven, and safely land it there. 
 
 Ill saw the gleam of no angelic wing, 
 
 Which might to me such blest assurance bring: 
 
 I, longing, gazed into immensity, 
 
 But there no angel cohorts could I see: 
 
 I heard no chariot on the empyrean roll, 
 
 To bear away my darling's parted soul ; 
 
 No angels' songs of "Welcome! welcome, home! 
 
 To heavenly rest!" could to my dull ear come. 
 
 12 I gazed in her sweet eyes with earnest quest, 
 And sought in them my questioning to rest, 
 But, glazed in death, no vision could they see, 
 They glanced no answer from her soul to me. 
 Upon her lips I pressed the questioning kiss, 
 If she could answer from her home in bliss, 
 But they were sealed in death, all moveless, still, 
 No knowledge could they speak, of good or ill. 
 
54 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 13 I asked in anguish, where, O, angel Death, 
 Is found my darling since she parted breath? 
 But from his shadowy solitudes no light 
 Broke on my path, to cheer my lonely night. 
 I asked the grave in which her body lay, 
 What it could to my questioning heart convey; 
 But no responses from the silent tomb, 
 
 All, all within, was doubt, and dread, and gloom. 
 
 14 Ah! what could mean that vision which she saw, 
 That filled her eye with rapture and with awe? 
 Was it the freak of her imagination, 
 Wrought by the power of Christian education? 
 Was it the rapture of a passing dream 
 Flashed through her brain, like an auroral gleam, 
 Kindling a transient brightness on the sky, 
 
 But doomed in deeper darkness then to die? 
 
 15 I do not know. O, could this doubt remove, 
 O, could I see the darling of my love, 
 
 A bright immortal in the world of bliss, 
 Nothing of pleasure, in a world like this, 
 Could equal mine. I'd be supremely blest, 
 And in the Christian's faith securely rest. 
 My strong desire makes me distrust all light, 
 Which might beam on me in my lonesome night. 
 
 16 Your Bible says: "Your heart shall live forever," 
 My heart from hers, then naught could ever 
 
 sever, 
 I could almost believe love were immortal, 
 If I could drive from faith's unfolding portal, 
 Cimmerian doubt, which shadows brightening 
 
 hope, 
 So that my weak faith cannot with it cope ; 
 For love a lover there must surely be, 
 Cause and effect through all eternity. 
 
 17 If love is, then, immortal, this must give 
 The one that loves an endless life to live 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 55 
 
 So if her fleshly heart lies cold and still, 
 Her heart, immortal on the heavenly hill, 
 Throbs in a bosom pure as falling snow, 
 And warm as summer sun's life giving glow, 
 True as a magnet drawing to the pole, 
 Ne'er turning while the endless ages roll. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 1 8 I showed you how the universe could rise 
 Without the aid of a creating cause, 
 Outside itself, how rolling earth and skies, 
 Upstood, harmonious with eternal laws 
 
 That govern them with never checks nor flaws. 
 But Ernest thinks that he has shown that I 
 Am teaching a false notion that withdraws 
 All reason from my logic — that I fly 
 Into the face of truth, when I his God deny. 
 
 19 It may be that his clever travesty 
 On my description of the origin 
 
 Of all things, hath befogged the clarity 
 Of your own vision. If you still may ken 
 The truth, I'll read to you what nature's pen 
 Kath written on her works, and how she proves 
 That man must cease to be, yea perish when 
 His body dies, as dearly as he loves 
 His darlings gone : his love no rational hope approves. 
 
 20 Through nature's works there runs a unity, 
 Most wondrous, yet that unity breaks forth 
 Into more wonderful variety, 
 
 In all we see in heaven or on the earth. 
 All living things are proved to have their birth 
 From one subsistence, call it bioplasm, 
 A living substance of the rarest worth, 
 Unorganized, that fills the fateful chasm 
 Between not living and all living organism. 
 
 21 The strictest search, that ever has been made 
 Into its mysteries, hath never found 
 
56 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN t 
 
 A difference, in the minutest shade, 
 In that which forms the plants, which so abound, 
 And that which forms the man with glory crowned. 
 For birds, or beasts, or fishes, or the worm, 
 No difference can be seen, by search profound; 
 And yet there is in each minutest germ, 
 A something that must its own species ever form. 
 
 22 The bioplast, within the acorn's shell, 
 Will never hatch an eagle for the sky, 
 
 It weaves an oak and does its weaving well, 
 To lift the mountain giant's arms on high, 
 But ne'er can bid the eagle's pinions fly 
 Far, far above the oak's sublimest height. 
 Some other must the needed life supply, 
 To plume the eagle for his daring flight, 
 Above the clouds, undazzled by the sun's clear light. 
 
 23 But something more of wonder, still we find 
 About these bioplasts of life, the source; 
 
 In living tissue of each several kind, 
 They're found by millions as the vital force 
 Which works each mechanism in its course. 
 They all the wear and tear of life repair, 
 And to each part its proper food disburse: 
 They weave the bones, the flesh, the nerves, the 
 To form the man, co-ordinating all with care, [hair, 
 
 24 Each bioplast hath its own work to do, 
 
 The class that weaves the nerve, weaves not the 
 Each to its calling is forever true, [bone; 
 
 It does one thing and does that thing alone. 
 They propogate themselves, each in the zone 
 Of its own class, with an amazing speed, 
 And science has not told us how 'tis done. 
 The blood supplies the food on which they feed: 
 With that they build the body as each part hath need. 
 
 25 Here, then, is one strong proof which nature 
 Against a future life, with mighty force, [gives, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 57 
 
 Since in her empire every thing that lives, 
 Rises from that self-same primordial source, 
 All, all must run the same predestined course. 
 Plants, insects, fishes, animals must die, 
 And man cannot himself from death divorce; 
 Those perish when their bodies mouldering lie, 
 So man can not escape the same dread destiny. 
 
 26 Then all gradations of organic life, 
 Possess so much in common that we know 
 All have a kinship; all in nature's strife, 
 Must to the self-same destination go. 
 
 A little thought the truth of this will show, 
 Take of organic life the lowest grade — 
 The vegetable world — and this will throw 
 Light on this question; plants and trees are made 
 Of just the same dead clods in living forms arrayed. 
 
 27 They eat, they drink, they breathe, they rest in 
 
 sleep — 
 Yes, plants must have their sleep as well as we, 
 If they their functions in sound health would keep, 
 And feeling, too, there is to plant and tree; 
 In these the wisest scientists agree. 
 Some plants are sensitive, all know; [me, 
 
 And why not all? These things show much to 
 And they have blood, and veins where it may 
 
 flow, 
 And carry to the parts the food on which they grow. 
 
 28 If they have feeling, then they must have nerves; 
 If nerves, why not sensation? sense of feeling, 
 A kind of knowledge that their station serves, 
 To inner life, the outer world revealing. 
 
 You show surprise as if I were now dealing, 
 In what cannot be known. But listen still, 
 Nature, although so much from us concealing, 
 Still shows us much; enough our eyes to fill 
 With wonder at the doings that reveal her skill. 
 
58 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 29 Plants to the outer world responsive speak 
 In language which e'en we can understand. 
 
 If in the drought, they thirst and drooping seek 
 Drink, and the rains fall on the thirsty land, 
 The trees and grass and flowers, a brightening 
 
 band, 
 Grow green and laugh beneath the watery chrism, 
 The plains, the dales, the hills, the mountains 
 
 grand, 
 All brighten with great joy in the baptism — 
 Ten million voiceless suppliants praise the cataclysm. 
 
 30 The morning glory feels the sun's first rays, 
 And opes her dewy eyes, her king to greet; 
 The lordly sunflower turns its face always, 
 To where the sun is seen, his glance to meet; 
 All nature answers to his genial heat, 
 
 And vegetation lifts its joyful head, 
 Where late stern winter held its icy seat; 
 His magic powers bid life spring from the dead, 
 And on the world of plants a voiceless joy is shed. 
 
 3 1 If they can feel the sun and rain and speak 
 In language which e'en we can understand; 
 Should we regard it an incredible freak 
 Of nature, to endue them with command 
 
 Of speech which each from each can comprehend? 
 I oft have thought while listening to the breeze 
 That floats among the flowers so soft and bland, 
 Or murmurs through the branches of the trees, 
 They're whispering sweet thoughts which do each 
 other please. 
 
 32 And I have thought that through the sombre 
 
 pines [forms, 
 
 That clothe the mountain tops with their dark 
 A speech is uttered which itself defines, 
 Now by soft breezes, now by mountain storms, 
 As from the clouds their legions rush in swarms; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 59 
 
 Those in low moans as if to speak some grief; 
 These, as the giants toss aloft their arms, 
 Roar mid the peaks, as they would seek relief 
 From wrath that struggles fiercely on each stormy 
 cliff. 
 
 33 Give us interpreters and we may hear 
 The speech of lilies in the pleasant fields, 
 May catch the speech of roses sweet and clear, 
 And learn the joys which their existence yields. 
 As early sun the morning glory gilds 
 
 And opens to our gaze its dewy eyes, 
 
 We may hear the soft speech which each flower 
 
 wields, 
 Its tales of love breathed forth in soft, low sighs, 
 Or mournful lamentation as each droops and dies. 
 
 34 If we have such near kinship to the trees, 
 
 And plants and flowers and grass which clothe the 
 Then with my thesis it more sure agrees, [plains, 
 That with the birds that carol their sweet strains, 
 And finny tribes of ocean's vast domains, 
 And lowing cattle, on a thousand hills, 
 Yea, all things falling in life's endless trains, 
 We have a nearer kinship, one which fills 
 My soul with wonder and my heart with rapture 
 thrills. 
 
 35 Your Hebrew prophet says, "all flesh is grass 
 And all the goodliness thereof, as flowers. " 
 The grass doth wither, the flowers fade and pass 
 Away, resigning life in few brief hours. 
 
 Now, as we all must bow to the same powers, 
 Where is the witness any one can show 
 That immortality can e'en be ours, 
 While all below to non-existence go? 
 Analogy shows final death to all below. 
 
 36 Pursue another line of thought, you'll find 
 
 The same conclusion for all thought doth trend 
 
€0 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 To this self-same solution of the mind, — 
 That with the body all its functions end. 
 A doctrine hated by you I defend. 
 The facts of science which can never lie, 
 Tell us most surely that we did ascend 
 From lower forms of life, though you deny, 
 And these from lower still thus almost endlessly. 
 
 yj Some say we can trace our paternal line 
 
 Through endless grades, to four primordial forms; 
 And some there are who do to one incline, 
 And find in vegetation life's first germs. 
 These in divergent lines sent off their sperms 
 Till bird, beast, insect and, at the last, man, 
 By rare selection, came and fixed the terms 
 Of their descent, so long ago began, 
 
 Thus homogeneous life through all the ages ran. 
 
 38 There was a point in the descent of man, — 
 If his soul is that grand immortal thing, 
 
 Of which you dream, — when soul began, 
 Then mortal life, by one infinite spring, 
 Leapt o'er a chasm, boundless as the swing 
 Of vast immensities, and soundless too 
 As that no plummet to its brink could bring 
 Back, from its unimagined depths, to you, 
 Any report of what may there be false or true. 
 
 39 His parents, mortals, wedded to the dust, 
 As transient as the mist that round us flies, 
 Stirred by the uneasy winds in sportive joust, 
 Caused from their own decaying flesh to rise, 
 A soul to soar and sing in Paradise, 
 Eternity to hold within its clasp, 
 
 And space to scan beyond the starry skies, 
 Heaven, earth and hell within his thoughts to 
 grasp, 
 At such a stretch of thought, for very breath I gasp. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 61 
 
 40 Can it be thought that life would ever take 
 Such mighty leap up from a mortal clod, 
 That it could from such low progeners break 
 Forth into life immortal as the God, 
 
 Who. as you say, rules nations with his rod? 
 It is incredible, it could not be, 
 Fate rules against it with resistless nod. 
 Mortal ne'er brought forth immortality; 
 More cannot come of aught than what doth in it lie. 
 
 41 From these same bioplasts, of which we spake, 
 We may another valid reason find, 
 
 Why we cannot to your fond theory take 
 Ourselves, and hope for endless life to mind, 
 Or soul, as fact and argument, combined 
 With argument, will show; these things we know 
 Are so short-lived as such life is denned. 
 Three hundred generations come and go 
 In one short day, as our best scientists can show. 
 
 42 With them, the famed ephemera of old 
 Would be a millenarian in age. 
 
 Ten million generations do unfold, 
 While our brief life doth our fond thoughts engage. 
 A million times that number do encage 
 Themselves within our bodies as their home; 
 And while we linger on this mortal stage, 
 Ten thousand million million millions come 
 And go, are born, live, die, and make our flesh their 
 tomb. 
 
 43 Their dead remains are from our systems cast 
 By vital forces they, themselves, create; 
 
 The living bears off the dead bioplast, 
 The microcosm of our mortal state. 
 And can our life, which is the aggregate 
 Of this astounding host of living things, 
 Which, after one brief pang, must yield to fate 
 And die, e'en be immortal? No. Fate brings 
 
62 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 To the same goal the whole, from which the unit 
 springs. 
 
 44 Again, that future life and resurrection, 
 Of which you dream, can never be a fact; 
 For this unanswerable objection, 
 Which unrelenting science must exact, 
 
 And all your sweetest dreams can ne'er infract. 
 If aught in nature proves a soul for man, 
 The same will, for the beast, the same enact; 
 And what would bring his body back again 
 To life would comprehend all beasts in the same plan. 
 
 45 Without attempt to answer, I will pass 
 That most unthinkable hypothesis 
 That, after substance ^n each being has 
 Been brought a thousand times in genesis 
 With other forms, it could, without a miss, 
 Return to the first being it possessed. 
 The statement of hypothesis like this 
 
 Is its own refutation, quick confessed; 
 That it can never be, all, all must be impressed. 
 
 46 But if this stark impossibility 
 
 Could be surmounted, what would then appear? 
 A most stupendous vision would you see. 
 Thousands of human beings would uprear 
 Their forms on each square mile, and overbear 
 Each other in the crush of crowded lands; 
 And if all other living things should peer 
 Out of their graves, as your wild faith commands, 
 Where could there be a place for their uncounted 
 bands? 
 
 47 The fish, that in the seas have come and gone, 
 Would more than fill the basin of the deep; 
 The fowls of heaven would, in their kinds alone, 
 O'er the whole world, like swarms of locusts, 
 
 sweep, 
 And all the lands in clouds of darkness keep; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 63 
 
 Earth's surface all would be one wriggling mass 
 
 Of all unseemly things that crawl or creep. 
 
 Though such a thought should not your faith 
 
 surpass, [harass. 
 
 Small hope of peace you'd have with such things to 
 
 48 A brood of hissing serpents in each path, 
 Wild beasts in wrangling armies to annoy, 
 
 In fierce contention to snarl forth their wrath, 
 Ten million things that could find no employ, 
 Save on each other appetite to cloy; 
 With earth so crowded, sea, and land, and air, 
 Where for the man could be a gleam of joy? 
 Of pleasure for himself he must despair — 
 Mayhap 't would be your hell. You'd send all sin- 
 ners there. 
 
 49 No, no, it cannot be, you do but dream: 
 Death, sure, must be the destiny of all, 
 Life for each man is but a transient gleam 
 Of light which must in endless darkness fall. 
 Then let us to our aid life's good things call, 
 To make of it the very best we can; 
 Because, escape necessity's stern thrall 
 
 We never can, however we may plan: 
 Extinction is for all, for bird, for beast, for man. 
 
 50 For though death be the destiny of all, 
 There's much in this short life that may inspire 
 Our souls with joy, to this your thoughts I call. 
 Far backward, backward from the age of fire, 
 We've seen how life hath risen higher and higher, 
 As it advanced along the track of doom; 
 We've seen how higher life e'en did require 
 The death of lower forms to give it room, — 
 
 How fed by these its ever brightening flowers could 
 bloom. 
 
 51 To struggle upward to more perfect forms, 
 Has been its trend through almost endless years; 
 
64 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN'/ 
 
 It hath been ceaseless rocked in restless storms 
 To give it strength as now itself uprears, — 
 To bring it to the height where it appears 
 In man to-dav. We read, in this, its story; 
 Each race must pass away in pains and fears, 
 To raise the next that came, to higher glory, 
 Life fed on death in fields that oft were torn and gory. 
 
 52 We see in man the fruit of what hath been 
 The price of death to endless generations, 
 That through the long-drawn past may now be 
 By the unerring eye of science: nations [seen, 
 Now flourish on the graves of low gradations 
 That ever went before: their sufferings 
 
 And death in midst of fearful tribulations, 
 Have bought for us the crown of priests and kings, 
 To revel in the wealth our high vocation brings. 
 
 53 Thus shall we find that all the good we have, 
 Comes as the price of suffering and death 
 
 To those who came before. The opened grave 
 That ever lies beside our earthly path, 
 And hath received the millions in death's swath, 
 Hath so prepared for us the great high way, 
 On which we go, that we reap aftermath 
 Of harvests richer far than ever they [day. 
 
 Have gathered, who have lived and died before our 
 
 54 The birth of blessing always follows pain, — 
 The pain of body, pain of mind or soul, 
 
 In things below us, or upon the plain 
 Of our existence. Its supreme control 
 Is exercised intensely through the whole 
 Creation; even things inanimate 
 Are not exempted from the suffering roll — 
 If we may be allowed to predicate 
 Suffering of subsistences in such a state. 
 
 55 We've seen what mighty tortures paved the way 
 For worlds to roll in glory, through the sky, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 65 
 
 And what convulsions in a later day, [high. 
 
 Gave birth to mountains, heaved their heads on 
 Bade the wide sea in its low depths to lie, 
 Spread out the plains; and how the flood and 
 Conspired in their mad games to fructify [flame 
 The land with the debris ground from the frame 
 Of earth, whence vegetation in its season came. 
 
 56 Then vegetation dies to furnish food 
 For animate creation in its turn; 
 
 That, too, may perish, or by flame or flood, 
 That from its ashes, when its members burn, 
 Hoarded by nature in her miser urn, 
 Life's own elixir she might sublimate, — 
 Or as its shattered wrecks the waters spurn, 
 And merge in ooze, in substance vastly great, 
 That she might thus for man his richest gifts create. 
 
 57 We come to birth by sharp, maternal pangs, 
 And parents fain must for our our wants provide, 
 Guard us, while helpless, from keen hunger's 
 
 pangs, [guide, 
 
 Through danger's paths our infant footsteps 
 And with us thus their choicest wealth divide. 
 By sacrifice, they feed our minds as well, [glide. 
 While we through youth to manhood swiftly 
 Their care and pain to rear us who can tell, 
 Though on the theme we might, with burning fervor 
 dwell. 
 
 58 If for ourselves we aught of good attain, 
 When we have passed from childhood's helpless 
 T'is at the price of labor, care and pain, [ways, 
 Drawn oft through many, many weary days: 
 And what we do, deserving highest praise, 
 Cost us the most of careful, suffering toil. 
 Thus nature's pathway to the goal she lays 
 Through pain and weariness, and dust and moil, 
 
 E'en up to where good holds all things below as spoil. 
 
66 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 59 But when we see what life has now attained 
 
 In man, as shown by what the race hath wrought, 
 We grudge not that the universe was pained, 
 And all terrestial things in labor sought 
 To bring to birth man's all-creative thought. 
 Look at its triumphs o'er the world displayed, 
 And tell me if it were too dearly bought; 
 Although its advent was full long delayed. 
 Till pangs through myriad ages was the value paid. 
 
 60 But we may find a joy as we behold 
 The upward trend of life's majestic march, 
 As pointing onward to an age of gold, 
 
 A sure conclusion that rewards the search; 
 And sets the keystone in the mighty arch 
 Of argument, as higher forms succeed 
 The lower forms of life, they hold a torch 
 Before our eyes, as onward we proceed, 
 And show us mighty things, if we will give them heed. 
 
 61 If, as we're taught, our race has ta'en the place 
 Of lower races in the lapse of time, — 
 
 A fact in nature we most surely trace — 
 The future life of earth will also climb 
 To higher stages, in its march sublime, 
 And future beings will o'erspread the earth, 
 To glorify the world in every clime, 
 As much above the races now, in worth, 
 As they above the forms whose life first came to birth. 
 
 62 Reason and science both alike proclaim 
 That this will be, and nature's works forecast 
 Its truth to us, and speak with tongues of flame, 
 Eternal law which ever has stood fast, 
 
 Must operate in future as in past: 
 As life has risen it must forever rise 
 Beneath its sway, through coming ages vast, 
 Until its glorious forms shall mount the skies, 
 And build among the stars its future Paradise. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN'/ 67 
 
 63 We are as worms to that exalted race, 
 As insects in the high archangel's gaze, 
 
 What we have done, as we may now here trace, 
 Is rudimental, but the starry haze 
 Of forming planets, to the sun's bright blaze, 
 Compared with what that future race may do. 
 Its glory would our now weak vision daze. 
 Imagination cannot bear us through [true. 
 
 The full conception of those thoughts so grand and 
 
 64 It is enough that 'tis our destiny 
 
 To form a link between those distant ages, 
 Whose annals in the rocks we dimly see, 
 And those to come, whose brightening presages, 
 Foretell a glory which our heart engages; 
 That such a race shall as our children come. 
 It will be wisdom taught by wisest sages, 
 That as past ages died to give us room 
 So we, for those to come, accept with joy our doom. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 65 Well, you are throngh, you think your doctrine 
 
 proved, 
 To show our souls must perish is your care: 
 To do this dreadful task you were behooved 
 To voyage through heaven and hell, through earth 
 
 and air, 
 "To bring us back the message of despair." 
 Could you accept with joy the dreadful doom 
 Of black annihilation, ne'er to share 
 One blissful ray of glory yet to come? 
 Could you with joy lie down in an eternal tomb? 
 
 66 You told us that through nature's works there runs 
 A wondrous unity, shown forth in law 
 
 That governs earth and air, and stars and suns, 
 And from it very grave conclusions draw: 
 You think that in your logic is no flaw. 
 That unity proclaims a God to me, 
 

 68 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And fills my soul with the profoundest awe. 
 It cannot prove what you have made your plea, 
 That all we are must cease at death for aye to be. 
 
 6y You tell us of that wondrous bioplasm, 
 It is the primal source of life, you say: 
 You make it fill the broad, unsounded chasm, 
 Between the living and not living clay. 
 The ground where life begins to wield its sway 
 O'er matter. This mysterious substance forms 
 The base wherein life doth its skill display. 
 Beginning with infinitessimal germs, 
 
 And rising up to where it shows unspoken charms. 
 
 68 Admit there is a substance such as this, 
 Admit it of all kinds of life the source, 
 Admit that the most strict analysis 
 
 Hath never shown its germs to be diverse, 
 In form and substance, nor in kind of force: 
 Grant that to-day it homogenous seems, 
 And yet at work in wide divergent course, 
 Weaving the tree and man. Yet he who deems 
 The theory as truth established, haply dreams. 
 
 69 A sharper scrutiny may yet reveal 
 
 This substance, compound and organic too. 
 The facts of science with which we may deal, 
 Must bear the eternal seal of being true, 
 Or they are worthless both to me and you. 
 Prove this is compound and organic, then 
 This argument, which seems so strong and new, 
 Goes down with others made by abler men, 
 To prove that when we die we never live again. 
 
 70 Then, whether this be so, or not, you blunder, 
 When saying that it fills the gulf between. 
 The living and not living; 'Tis a wonder 
 That you should thus confuse what's plainly seen. 
 For it hath all the attributes, I ween, 
 
 Of matter in its constitution cast. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 69 
 
 It is, then, either dead or living, e'en 
 As other things. What fills the gulf at last, 
 That lies between the dead and living bioplast? 
 
 71 Something within this substance, yet not of it, 
 Must fill the fateful gulf that separates 
 
 The living from the dead, and this must prove it. 
 Something that e'en the substance antedates, 
 And that which through it always permeates: 
 That agent must be life or living soul. 
 And thus your bioplast invalidates 
 Your own assertions, and, like this, the whole 
 Vast works of nature will be found to work this role. 
 
 72 Man has a soul as e'en your science shows. 
 But when you tell me of the wonders wrought 
 By bioplasts, the deep conviction grows 
 Stronger and stronger. Here is food for thought, 
 With an immeasureable richness fraught. 
 
 I see not only soul in bioplasm, — [sought, — 
 The gem for which all men have strongly 
 But deity, and that no empty phasm, 
 And he, 'twixt life and death, doth fill the soundless 
 chasm. 
 
 73 You speak of kinship in the world of life, — 
 That by it we are brothers to the worms, 
 And to the beasts and trees, — that in the strife 
 Of races which the whole wide world transforms, 
 We lose our being when we reach these terms 
 Of life, the same as those. As they must die 
 So we, exposed to the same fateful harms, 
 
 Can never from the same destruction fly, — 
 So in eternal shades we must forever lie. 
 
 74 It is the truth that in our lower zones 
 We're kindred to the earth, the very clods; 
 But you would not affirm of rocks and stones, 
 That they have feeling, sense, that matter shrouds 
 A soul like man's, because his spirit plods 
 
70 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Through a material body. No. We find 
 But part of truth in this; kin to the gods 
 We may be in our upper zones; the mind 
 May lift us far above dead matter, you may find. 
 
 75 So it is true that in another line, 
 
 Life makes us kindred to the trees and flowers; 
 So through them all the joyous life may shine, 
 Which you claim for them, and their vital powers 
 May give them sense and feeling, thought like 
 
 ours, 
 And language too that they can understand, 
 And yet the vital force that clothes their bowers, 
 May not of life have just the same command, 
 Man's soul may lift him up to a much higher stand. 
 
 76 We know well that a three-fold kinship binds 
 Our being to the animate creation, 
 
 Tis here that nature's ardent lover finds 
 Not only the material filiation, 
 Conjoined with our organic life's relation, 
 But surely feeling, sense and instinct too, 
 The power of choice and some sense of causation; 
 All this we must admit is strictly true, 
 And yet it does not prove correctness of your view. 
 
 77 You cannot say the same fate waits the trees 
 That waits the rocks and stones which neath them 
 
 lie, 
 Because they are of matter formed. In these 
 There's something wanting that may those supply 
 With what may separate their destiny 
 Wider than your imagination dreams. 
 And so twixt beasts and trees you may descry 
 The same sure light that from this premise beams. 
 Here too your reasoning fails, as faileth all your 
 
 schemes. 
 
 78 And then if you could prove that all these per- 
 A thing too hard for even you to do — [ish, — 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 71 
 
 You could not prove what you so strongly cherish, 
 That man with all his powers must perish too. 
 If that were true still this might not be true; 
 For that somewhat which differentiates 
 Man from the beasts, may lift him in your view 
 Higher above than Heaven's bright pearly gates, 
 And wide as vast eternity divide their fates. 
 
 79 Because some things in common you may see 
 In trees and men, and beasts and birds that fly, 
 You can not hence affirm the fate to be 
 
 To all the same, though all their bodies die. 
 This analogic reasoning would apply, 
 Only if they all things in common had, 
 But their essential difference doth defy 
 Your argument and may, with reason, plead, 
 To give to man a soul immortal as its mead. 
 
 80 And hence, though beasts and birds, and plants 
 
 and flowers, 
 A thousand things, in common with our race, 
 May have. E'en though you prove that they 
 
 have powers 
 Of thought and feeling, though you trace 
 Intelligence, like that which hath a place 
 With men, if you but one remainder find 
 In man and not in them, you turn your face 
 To that which may reveal immortal mind, 
 And so your kinship argument must be resigned. 
 
 81 In homogeneous life, you think you find 
 An argument against the soul of man, 
 But we a Maker find that life behind, 
 Who comprehends all life in one vast plan; 
 Whose searching eye can all his creatures scan. 
 If one life through all organisms run, 
 
 One source it flows from since the world began, 
 That source is God whose work for aye goes on, 
 His breath gives life to all that breathes beneath the 
 sun. 
 
72 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 82 And thus this bond of homogeneous life, 
 That you say runs through all the living races, 
 Surviving even nature's fiercest strife, 
 Instead of proving death to all, gives traces 
 
 Of God most strongly, thus our doubt displaces, 
 Thus all your arguments will come to naught, 
 By which you would throw dust into our faces, 
 To hide the soul and God from our deep thought: 
 In all things nature is with mightiest meaning fraught. 
 
 83 You treat the theory of evolution 
 
 As it were fact, and from it you would show, 
 Of all organic life, the grand solution. 
 You say the gap which lies, as all must know, 
 Twixt mortal and immortal deals the blow 
 Of fate to every hope of endless life. 
 You say a time was in life's endless flow, 
 When soul began, — if soul from nature's strife, 
 E'en came immortal with such boundless prospects 
 rife — 
 
 84 A soul to soar and sing in Paradise, 
 Eternity to hold in its wide clasp, 
 
 All space to scan beyond the starry skies, 
 Heaven, earth and hell within its thoughts to 
 
 grasp, 
 That living things, whose life is but a gasp, 
 Compared with life eternal, could give birth, 
 To such a soul, would truly reason rasp 
 With harshest discords ever heard on earth: — 
 Would be a thesis madness only would hold forth. 
 
 85 Life, unassisted, surely could not take 
 Such mighty leap, up from a senseless clod: 
 It could not from such low progeners break 
 Forth into life, immortal as the God 
 
 Who, as we know, rules nature with his nod. 
 'Twould be incredible, it could not be, 
 God stands against it with resistless rod. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 73 
 
 Mortal ne'er brought forth immortality. 
 More cannot come of aught than what doth in it lie. 
 
 86 If evolution tells the wondrous tale 
 Of life unaided by creative power, 
 
 Then all our hopes of future life must fail: 
 We must accept extinction for our dower. 
 And you are right. You live but one brief hour. 
 But you have begged the question of creation. 
 We showed what must be true forever more, — 
 What can be proved without a revelation, — 
 That life could never come from such an incubation. 
 
 87 There are such gaps in nature's grand succession, 
 Your science has not filled and never can, 
 That she has been compelled to the confession, 
 That evolution never can explain 
 
 The wonders of the long descent of man. 
 If life has come up such a long gradation 
 It follows out some comprehensive plan. 
 So there must be some planner in creation, 
 With power to fill the links in life's concatenation. 
 
 88 To bridge those gaps requires creative power, 
 E'en after life has started up the grade 
 
 Of its long ascent through its germ and flower, 
 Up to the fruitage, which it e'er hath laid, 
 In nature's lap. But with that power displayed, 
 Life from the mortal, e'en could make the leap 
 Which you affirm could never have been made, 
 Up to the immortal where its pulses keep 
 Time with eternal ages as they onward sweep. 
 
 89 True science ne'er denies the words of truth, 
 As spoken by old prophets long ago; 
 
 E'en when the human race was in its youth; 
 
 And at its best estate can only show 
 
 What true religion long before did know — 
 
 Man's body rises from a senseless clod, 
 
 Like all the beasts which come in grades below. 
 
74 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And yet a deathless soul it might have had, 
 When life was kindled in it by the breath of God. 
 
 90 You speak of the astounding aggregate 
 Of bioplasts which in our bodies live, 
 
 And do their work through all our mortal state, 
 And die. You say that aggregate doth give 
 The sum of all the life that we receive; 
 That all these units die and pass away. 
 So you say reason tells us to believe 
 That life, the sum, must also have its day — 
 The soul and body, all must, e'en like them, decay. 
 
 91 Now here you have again made a great blunder, 
 And so your reasoning is at fault once more — 
 A fault at which I surely greatly wonder. 
 
 If you will look your reasoning sharply o'er, 
 You will see what you should have seen before. 
 Of life, these units cannot be the sum; — [shore, 
 They're but the Charons which, from shore to 
 Across the stygian stream, do go and come, 
 Of change from dead to living, are the medium. 
 
 92 That is, they change dead matter into living, 
 Which in the tissues, nerves and bones abound. 
 They cannot be the sum of what they're giving, 
 This would the giver with the gift confound 
 And so your argument falls to the ground. 
 They work for life to build man's living frame, 
 The ready servants of a power profound, 
 Which is the architect of wondrous fame — 
 
 The living soul of man; where is a better name? 
 
 93 That soul may live, though all its servants die, 
 As you must see if you would reason clear; 
 Indeed, these little workers testify- 
 That there must be a power forever near, 
 Directing them as they the fabric rear, 
 Co-ordinating all to the great plan 
 
 Which doth in living organism appear, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 75 
 
 To form the tree, the bird, or beast, or man, 
 They prove that life or soul is the wise artisan. 
 
 94 Behind this soul must be another Power, 
 
 That stands behind all nature's wondrous forces, 
 Co-ordinating all forevermore, 
 Giving to living souls all their resources, 
 As each its means and power and skill disburses 
 To its own kind, as bird, or beast, or man, 
 And guiding suns or planets in their courses, 
 Showing the universe built on a plan, 
 Finished by our Creator, as by him began. 
 
 95 How could these little beings build a man, 
 Without coordination of their hosts, 
 
 By something that will guide them to their plan, 
 And keep their many millions at their posts; 
 Which in their wondrous work for aye forecasts 
 How it shall end? That something is the soul. 
 How could the living souls on all life's coasts 
 Build those of their own kind, through the whole 
 Except creative power, coordinate the whole? [role, 
 
 96 And so your bioplasm cannot destroy 
 The argument that after death we live, 
 As everything cannot that you employ. 
 It even does the best assurance give, 
 As all right reason is bound to believe, 
 That life on organism does not depend, 
 But e'en exists without, you might perceive; 
 It also proves a power that must transcend 
 
 All things, and in one plan all things must compre- 
 hend. 
 
 97 You say the argument would prove too much; 
 'Twould give a soul to beasts and trees as well; 
 That what would prove man's soul immortal, such 
 Would just the same delightful story tell [knell 
 To beasts, and birds, and trees. You sound the 
 Of human hope, you think. Should we admit 
 
76 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 That this would follow, it would higher swell 
 Our joyful hope. There would be naught in it 
 That would not, in the highest, happiest sense, be fit. 
 
 98 Let me be sure that I shall see the flowers, 
 The grass, the trees, the animate creation, 
 Bestowed by life's all-reproductive powers 
 In the transfigured earth of Revelation, 
 'Twill be to me a joyful prelibation 
 
 Of the sweet wine of life in that new earth. 
 If they have, with me, there a habitation, 
 'Twill give me pleasure of most wondrous worth, 
 Fill full the cup of joy that our sweet faith brings 
 forth. 
 
 99 When I shall meet her that I loved of yore, 
 
 In that bright world's immortal beauties clad; 
 When I shall walk with her that heavenly shore, 
 As once this earthly I with her did tread, 
 'Twill make my overflowing heart more glad, 
 If roses bloom along our pathway bright, 
 If green leaves gently rustle overhead, 
 And birds sing, in the branches, with delight, 
 And bright green fields are there which frosts can 
 never blight. 
 
 100 The brightest earthly scene I e'er beheld 
 Was once in rosy June, now long ago, 
 When we first rambled forth to the green field, 
 On a bright path which brighter aye must grow. 
 On our left hand did the sweet clover blow, 
 And shed its fragrance to us on the wind, 
 While on our right the young corn rustled low. 
 And as we left the fragrant scene behind, 
 
 We sought seclusion in a bright green grove to find. 
 
 101 There, side by side, upon a fallen tree, 
 
 We learned a secret of most precious worth, 
 Which always fills young hearts with ecstacy, 
 And gives the highest joy that is of earth. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 77 
 
 'Twas there our young hearts' love first came to 
 
 birth. 
 Each knew the other's love, although unspoken, 
 Shown by those signs that ever shadow forth 
 The tender passion, e'er its surest token, 
 Our sacred vows, unuttered there, remain unbroken. 
 
 102 Then, as we raised our eyes to heaven above, 
 Where the blue sky gleamed through the bright 
 To seek divine approval of a love [green leaves, 
 Which God, to faithful hearts, forever gives — 
 The richest earthly gift that man receives — 
 How bright the sky beamed on our raptured 
 
 sight! 
 The. sweetest sounds that warbling nature gives 
 Rang from the birds, which sang with all their 
 
 might; [dors bright! 
 
 And O how the sweet landscape gleamed with splen- 
 
 103 I scarcely know how heaven fairer seems 
 Than earth seemed then transfigured by our love, 
 How heavenly light could scatter sweeter beams 
 Through rustling foliage in each heavenly grove; 
 How aught that's there could sweeter rapture 
 
 move, [core. 
 
 Than filled our hearts and thrilled them to the 
 
 If you can to my willing reason prove [more, 
 
 That such sweet scenes shall re-appear once 
 
 You swell the sweet attractions of that heavenly 
 
 shore. 
 
 104 I've often thought how much I'd love to hear 
 The same birds sing those same sweet rounde- 
 lays, 
 
 Which I have heard and loved so strongly here; 
 Which waken now sweet thoughts of other days 
 When those I loved joined in their songs of 
 
 praise. 
 I'd love to see the young lambs skip and play 
 
78 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Upon the heavenly hills. I'm sure 'twould raise 
 My joy to sweeter songs in that glad day, 
 And warmer passions move, which would my bosom 
 sway. 
 
 105 Give back the flowers that I have loved before, 
 Awake the spring birds' songs in heavenly 
 
 groves, 
 Let humbler creatures people that fair shore, 
 The least of which the heavenly Father loves; 
 The humblest, lowliest thing that life here 
 
 moves, 
 There's not a living thing I would not joy, 
 To see transfigured there, in swarms or droves, 
 On heaven's vast fields, where they can find em- 
 ploy 
 In scenes, where other creatures they cannot annoy. 
 
 106 Prove this is true, and you will not destroy, 
 The ground on which our expectations rest, 
 You glorify it, give us greater joy, 
 
 Enlarge the means by which we are made blest. 
 Prove this, your science hath not then possessed, 
 Aught that religion hath entire concealed, — 
 Yea, aught that she hath not somewhat ex- 
 pressed. 
 Have you not read the mighty songs that pealed, 
 Just ere that wondrous *book began to be unsealed? 
 
 107 Who were the singers of those wondrous songs? 
 The saved of men first poured their raptures 
 
 forth, 
 And then ten thousand thousand angel tongues, 
 Then all the living creatures of the earth, 
 The greatest, and those of the smallest worth, 
 All that were 'neath the earth and in the heaven, 
 And in the seas, prolonged the heavenly mirth; 
 
 * Rev. v. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN f 79 
 
 To all within them, this same power was given, 
 Then with their sounding songs the earth and sky were 
 riven. 
 
 108 Your science may expound these sacred songs, 
 And prove that they may be immortal too, 
 Give to all living things immortal tongues, 
 And thus, in all things, prove the doctrine true, 
 When old things pass, and all things are made 
 
 new, 
 All living creatures, that have passed away, 
 May hear the trumpet sound the glad review, 
 Come forth upon the resurrection day, [ray. 
 When birds and flowers shall bask in light's eternal 
 
 109 Your shrewd objection to the resurrection, 
 E'en if it should all living things embrace, 
 Is thus shown false upon a slight reflection. 
 He that can save them by his boundless grace, 
 Hath ample power to make for them a place; 
 Transfigured in that sweet, bright world of love, 
 They'd have no mind to hurt or to deface, 
 And no desire would baser passions move: 
 
 All, all would his eternal grace with joy approve. 
 
 1 10 Old prophets sang, three thousand years ago, 
 Of this same beautiful and happy state, 
 
 By inspiration, they did then foreshow, 
 That God would, in all living things create 
 New natures, that the mighty and the great, 
 Should not oppress the weak. The child should 
 play [sate 
 
 Unhurt, with poisonous snakes. No wolf should 
 His hunger on the lamb, in desert way; 
 All things should dwell in peace, together, in that day. 
 
 in The spotted leopard shall, in peace, lie down 
 With the young kid, the calf with the young lion; 
 And, bound with silken cords, they both shall 
 own 
 
80 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 The gentle touch of childhood, its young scion 
 Shall lead them, and the suckling child shall toy- 
 on 
 The hole of asps. The cow and bear shall feed 
 At the same stall; their young, in this new Zion, 
 Shall dwell together; and the lion's need, 
 Shall, like the ox, be filled without devouring greed. 
 
 112 In all the holy mountain of our God, 
 Nothing for aye shall hurt, and naught destroy, 
 For all creation bows beneath his rod, 
 
 In lowly love, submissive, and with joy, 
 That dreadeth nothing that can aught annoy. 
 For all, from least to greatest, know the Lord; 
 His knowledge fills the earth. 'Tis her employ, 
 To yield a rapt obedience to His word, 
 And, with high adoration, his great acts record. 
 
 113 'Tis true, as you have said, in ages past, 
 
 Life has been fed on death, and death on life, 
 A war projected through duration vast, 
 With life and death, the combatants in strife, 
 Has made the earth a scene, where graves are 
 
 rife, 
 Where myriad million million living forms, 
 Have sunk and died neath destiny's sharp knife, 
 But life, thus shaken in gigantic storms, 
 Hath ever risen, glorious, from its primal germs. 
 
 1 14 It was a wondrous triumph when life brought 
 Man into being with his reasoning mind, 
 The crowning glory of Creation's thought. 
 You're not surprised, nor cavil when you find 
 That life has thus, by suffering, been enshrined; 
 That all we have is at the price of pain; 
 
 That myriad lives have been to death resigned, 
 
 To give us life. Their loss has been our gain, 
 
 This is the rule, as life hath struggled up its plane. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 81 
 
 115 You think the glory that man has achieved, 
 In the researches of his wondrous thought, 
 Hath much the darkness of this scene relieved, 
 Hath great assurance to the doubting brought, 
 Is worth the price at which it has been bought. 
 We will admit that what you say is true, — 
 Though all its triumphs are with suffering 
 Tis not a thing in our religion new, [fraught, — 
 
 It brings a mighty fact, in nature, to our view. 
 
 116 This fact, which does portend death to the mind 
 As you may think, tells quite another story, 
 To those who seek a higher truth to find 
 
 In it, it pours a radiant burst of glory, 
 O'er our religion, of it, probatory, 
 Pointing us to the mighty sacrifice, 
 Which, for our sins, was made expurgatory, 
 That this most wondrous life might higher rise, 
 And find a lasting dwelling-place above the skies. 
 
 117 If sacrifice brings to us all our good, 
 And life, itself, comes at the price of pain, 
 If our best gifts come at the price of blood, 
 If greatest loss to others brings us gain, 
 And this is nature's order, on life's plain 
 Below, why, then, we should expect that pangs 
 Of sharpest suffering would push up life's train, 
 To highest heights where life eternal hangs 
 
 Its signals out, to lure from death's eternal fangs. 
 
 118 If suffering parents give us mortal life, 
 We might expect if life immortal came, 
 T'would come in sharpest pangs of mortal strife. 
 As suffered by some being, whose great name 
 Would lift him far above all human fame, 
 That suffering measured by the gift it bought, 
 Might be of worth which mortals could not 
 
 frame 
 Words to express, — a price surpassing thought, 
 Which, to our mortal race, immortal being brought. 
 
82 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 119 Your reasoning thus suggests the mightiest fact 
 Of our religion, the foundation stone 
 
 Which none but God, in Christ, could ere enact, 
 The sacrifice which did for sin atone, — 
 A dying Christ, who suffered all alone, 
 To push our life still up the mighty plain, 
 It hath been climbing, till it mounts the throne, 
 Where through eternal ages it shall reign, 
 Forever free from change, forever free from pain. 
 
 120 If you have found the order of creation 
 And agencies, by which life's higher forms, 
 Have risen thus through one concatenation, 
 Up, e'en to man, from its primeval germs, 
 As those succeed these lower at their terms, 
 You only follow the same order shown, 
 
 In that old book which cannot lose its charms, 
 Where higher life than man's is not unknown, 
 Showing how that shall rise from this by pain alone. 
 
 121 The present race must die, to give that room, 
 As lower forms have died, to give us places. 
 That higher life shall rise out of the tomb 
 
 Of this, as this from graves of lower races; 
 E'en as your science hath foreshown us traces 
 Of that high life you so sublimely sung, 
 A race to be adorned with wondrous graces. 
 Upon your song, in deepest joy, I hung, 
 That science and religion had the same harp strung. 
 
 122 That science should forecast an age of gold, 
 In upward trend of life's triumphant march, 
 Is surely a conclusion none too bold — 
 
 A meet reward for long-persistent search. 
 It sets the keystone in the mighty arch 
 Of argument. As higher forms succeed 
 The lower forms of life, they hold the torch 
 Before our eyes, as onward we proceed, 
 And show us mighty things, if we will give them heed. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 83 
 
 123 It is true that our race hath ta'en the place 
 Of lower races, in the lapse of time — 
 
 In faith and science, this we surely trace. 
 So shall the life of earth most surely climb 
 To higher stages, in its march sublime, 
 And coming man will overspread the earth 
 With music of the spheres their songs to chime, 
 As much above the races now, in worth, 
 As they, mayhap, above the forms of life's first birth. 
 
 124 Reason and science, both alike, proclaim 
 That this will be, and faith's grand words forecast 
 Its truth to us. All speak with tongues of flame 
 That changeless law, which ever has stood fast, 
 Must operate in future as in past; 
 
 As life hath risen, it must ever rise, 
 Beneath its sway, through coming ages vast, 
 Until its glorious forms shall mount the skies, 
 And build among the stars its future paradise. 
 
 125 As worms, we may be, to that glorious race, 
 As insects, in the high archangel's gaze, 
 What we have done, which all our annals trace, 
 May be but rudimental, as the haze 
 
 Of forming planets, to the sun's bright blaze. 
 Compared with what that coming race will do, 
 Its glory might our now weak vision daze; 
 Imagination cannot bear us through 
 The full conception of a thought so grand and true. 
 
 126 And thus true science doth again forecast 
 A fact of faith — man in the resurrection. 
 You peal its trump with no uncertain blast, 
 Although you sound it in the wrong direction, 
 And give it falling tones — the wrong inflection. 
 Faith takes your trump and makes its clarion 
 
 wind [perfection, 
 
 Up through those heights which promise man's 
 And bids us, in its notes, assurance find 
 Of glorious life to come for body, as for mind. 
 
84 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 127 So Revelation, in her grandest flights, 
 Is not unscientific, as she wings 
 
 Her way up to her most transcendant heights. 
 And science, as creative power she sings, 
 Her choicest music to religion brings, 
 And weaves with her a most majestic song, 
 Whose notes entrance great prophets, priests 
 and kings, [strong, 
 
 Which shakes the earth and sky with accents 
 And rolls its glorious tones eternal years along. 
 
 128 When Faith to longing ears of mortals speaks, 
 And tells them that the dead shall live again, 
 True Science never with her measures breaks, 
 But sings the same soul-extacizing strain. 
 Upward, O Life, on thine ascending plain, 
 Till thou doston Faith's highest mountains stand; 
 Science and Faith shall with thee jointly reign, 
 As there, in union joined, with hand in hand, 
 
 O'er everlasting realms, unutterably grand. 
 
 129 True science doth implicitly forecast, 
 For higher life, a renovated earth 
 
 In coming ages, as in ages past; 
 Each higher form, as it hath come to birth, 
 Hath found a dwelling-place of better worth, 
 Prepared, mayhap, by some catastrophe, 
 Where fairer scenes bespeak more joyful mirth. 
 So faith adheres to sound philosophy, [be. 
 
 When she foretells that a new heaven and earth shall 
 
 130 As science tells us that in ancient ages, 
 All life had been destroyed by flood or fire, 
 Full many a time seen on earth's rocky pages, 
 So it may be again; destruction, dire, 
 
 May sweep all life away in flaming ire, 
 The heavens be rolled together as a scroll, 
 As earth, enwrapping flames, rise higher and 
 higher; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 85 
 
 Those heavens, o'er which the tempests' chariots 
 roll, 
 Shall pass away with mighty noise, as thunders knoll. 
 
 131 Thus Faith but tells the same eventful story, 
 For time to come, as in the ages past, 
 Science hath told us; up the heights of glory, 
 Both do ascend, and shall, from first to last; 
 Both o'er our race a glorious halo cast, 
 Both do confer on us most priceless treasure, 
 And point to realms immeasurably vast; 
 
 Both yield the wine and milk of sweetest pleasure, 
 And crown our reverent heads with honors without 
 measure. 
 
 132 But Faith is oldest, and of noblest birth, 
 And she her mission to us first began; 
 She sang her noble anthems o'er the earth, 
 E'er Science's voice was scarcely heard by man. 
 In his best progress, she has led the van, 
 And, in the march of history's constellations, 
 Her shining feet through galaxies have run, 
 And left their trail of glittering scintillations — 
 
 Her footprints, as she cast her glories o'er the nations. 
 
 133 But all along, as she did bring to view 
 Her wonders, Science did forever stand, 
 
 Her constant witness, and pronounce them true. 
 And now as Faith, upon her mountain grand, 
 Sees her last vision of the promised land, 
 Fair, truthful Science still stands at her side, 
 A ready servant at her high command, 
 With her, to sweep the landscape, far and wide, 
 And greatest wonders told can never them divide. 
 
 134 For Faith, a greater wonder scarce hath told, 
 Than Science hath been able to reveal, 
 And the suggestion is not over-bold, 
 
 That, as the coming ages onward steal, [deal, 
 Science shall with Faith's grandest mysteries 
 
86 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Follow her labyrinths with an unerring clew, 
 Round the whole circle of her orbit wheel, 
 Bring all things forth to mortals' clearest view, 
 And, with the seal of God, stamp all her words as true. 
 
 135 Faith's piercing vision sees the world on fire, 
 In the last judgment's solemn, awful day, 
 And, as the fiery rack mounts higher and higher, 
 She hears the crash as the heavens pass away. 
 She sees the earth sink midst the fiery fray, 
 And hears her utter her expiring groan, 
 
 And yield herself as desolation's prey, 
 A burned and blackened waste thro' every zone, 
 A sere and barren world, from whence all life is flown. 
 
 136 But while she gazes on that fearful scene, 
 Out of earth's ashes, she doth see arise 
 
 A new world, glittering with perennial green, 
 Its outspread plains o'erarched by the new skies, 
 Where vegetation springs, that never dies, 
 Where rise earth's new creations, grand and fair, 
 From things that walk or creep to bird that flies, 
 Where no black tempest-clouds shall ever scare, 
 But all be beautiful and bright forever there. 
 
 137 On that new earth, she sees no mighty waste, 
 Of waters, for "there shall be no more sea," 
 No sea, no sea, where men, by tempests chased, 
 So oft have sought in vain from death to flee; 
 No shipwrecks there, where striding helplessly 
 So many have sunk down to rise no more. 
 And naught of evil shall there ever be, 
 
 No sickness, death, tears. storms nor battles roar, 
 But righteousness and peace shall dwell on every 
 shore. 
 
 138 And while she gazes on that vision bright, 
 A fairer radiance bursts upon her view, 
 
 For where she stands on her great mountain 
 height, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 87 
 
 She sees a splendid city bright and new, 
 The New Jerusalem, down from the blue 
 Of heaven, descend from God, prepared as bride 
 Adorned for husband, ever pure and true, 
 Flinging a heavenly splendor far and wide, 
 Perfection of the beautiful on every side. 
 
 139 Who can describe the splendor of that scene? 
 Those walls: so long, so broad, so vast, so high! 
 Of precious stones, all flecked with diamonds, 
 
 sheen. 
 Those towers and bulwarks that outsoar the sky. 
 O'er which no hostile dart can ever fly; 
 Those gates of pearl so solid and so strong, 
 To which no enemy shall e'er draw nigh, 
 Oh, of its glory Earth shall raise the song, 
 And Heaven shall with her its great Builder's praise 
 
 prolong. 
 
 140 But while she looks the gates lift up their heads. 
 The everlasting doors of light give way, 
 
 The inner glory on her vision sheds 
 The radiance of an everlasting day. 
 The golden streets, their glittering walks display 
 Mansions of gold, their portals open wide, 
 In splendid parks life's sparkling fountains play, 
 Whose crystal streams through blooming gar- 
 dens glide, 
 And make entrancing visions rise on every side. 
 
 141 Yon sacred mount, which rainbows now sur- 
 
 round, 
 With summit lost in Heaven's vast upper deep, 
 Displays the throne where Christ, the Lamb, is 
 
 crowned, 
 Down from whose hights the crystal waters leap, 
 Of that great river, whose bright cascades keep 
 Time with the anthems of the heavenly hosts. 
 Whose streams make glad the city as they sweep 
 
88 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Through all its parks and gardens and its coasts, 
 Far out, wher'er life's sleepless sentries keep their 
 posts. 
 
 142 Along the banks of that wide-spreading river 
 The tree of life thrives in eternal bloom, 
 And on the streets forever and forever, 
 There never shall for it, be wanting room, 
 
 No place is found there for lean famine's gloom. 
 Its flowers and fruits are without alternations, 
 There'll be no food there for the greedy tomb; 
 No sickness, nor physicians' visitations, 
 For all its leaves are for the healing of the nations. 
 
 143 Faith hears a glorious voice aloud proclaim, 
 Behold with men their God makes his abode, 
 And they shall hear and love his glorious name; 
 They shall be his and own his sovereign rod. 
 He will be with them and will be their God; 
 He from their eyes shall wipe away all tears, 
 They shall be free from death's relentless nod, 
 Free from alarms and doubts and gloomy fears, 
 
 And feel no grief, no pain, through everlasting years. 
 
 144 Its gates wide open stand through all the day; 
 Yea in that happy place, there is no night. 
 All, all can enter who may pass that way; 
 The nations of the saved walk in its light; 
 
 All kings shall bring their glory and their might 
 Into the place, the gentiles all shall bring 
 Into it wealth and honor as its right. 
 Truth, purity and righteousness shall sing 
 The praises of the Lamb, her everlasting king. 
 
 145 O, joy! O, peace! O, life forevermore! 
 
 No withering curse, no night shall be in Heaven 
 No blight, no dearth on that celestial shore; 
 No storms with which the old world hath been 
 
 riven; 
 No blindness there, for sight to all is given, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 89 
 
 And they shall see the King's resplendent face. 
 No bondage there with which they have here 
 
 striven, 
 But kings and priests, triumphant in his grace, 
 They all shall reign forever in that happy place. 
 
 146 Now as she lingers on her great high mountain, 
 She hears a burst of song from Heaven's vast 
 
 height, 
 Once more descending like a silvery fountain, 
 Sweet as the choiring angels fair and bright, 
 Sang o'er creation at the dawn's first light, 
 Or as those singing hosts, o'er Bethlehem's plains, 
 Sang, when their presence lightened Judah's 
 
 night, 
 When o'er the lowly manger wak'd those strains, 
 Proclaiming peace to man, wherever conflict reigns. 
 
 147 It is a song of heavenly invitation, 
 
 Sweet! O how sweet! to weary wandering souls, 
 To take the waters of a free salvation, 
 Which from the throne like a Niagara rolls, 
 To all that dwell on earth between the poles. 
 She hears the Spirit and the bride say come, 
 And bids all hearers speak the same sweet word, 
 And shout to all mankind a welcome home, 
 Whence they from its safe mansions nevermore shall 
 roam. 
 
 148 There are the thirsty welcomed to the fount, 
 And whosoever will, she hears, may come, 
 And drink the water flowing from yon mount, 
 In Mercy's arms forever there is room, 
 Room, where the flowers of Eden ever bloom, 
 Room in a Saviour's loving, bleeding heart, 
 His presence scatters earth's funereal gloom, 
 His hand can quell each pain, and soothe each 
 
 smart, 
 And from his feet he bids no trembling soul depart. 
 
90 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 149 Let Faith describe a world of perfect bliss, 
 With glory far surpassing mortal thought, 
 
 In everything more pure, more bright than this, 
 Where she, all forms of excellence hath sought, 
 To be into her grand ideal wrought; [grand, 
 And when she paints that world so bright and 
 With everything that can give pleasure fraught, 
 Science, as you interpret her, doth stand, 
 And point to such a world with an unerring hand. 
 
 150 O, tell me why should faith and science part? 
 Why should the sisters ever be arrayed 
 With hostile front, to do each other hurt? 
 She and true science never can be made 
 Antagonistic, they must ever aid 
 
 Each other as they shall together go 
 Forth on their glorious mission ne'er to fade, 
 But brightning as they hasten to and fro, 
 O'er earth, which neath their footsteps e'er shall 
 greener grow. 
 
 151 You say I fail at the supremest point, 
 
 To prove that we shall live in that new earth. 
 Then with my eye-salve, I'll your eyes anoint, 
 That you may see, as we shall sally forth, 
 To find the precious gem of rarest worth, 
 That Faith and Science do thus far agree, 
 And show for coming life a higher birth. 
 There is no difference, twixt you and me 
 Thus far the self-same truths we both together see. 
 
 152 If science cannot prove faith's future claim, 
 She does not contradict it, as we're shown. 
 That she suggests it, next shall be our aim 
 
 To show, the mighty things to science known, 
 Revealing purpose deep, life to enthrone, 
 Show that her aim has ever been perfection. 
 This you must see, some things were better 
 grown, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 91 
 
 The lower to the higher in subjection, 
 All furnish richest food for our profound reflection. 
 
 153 Since higher happiness, we know, keeps pace 
 With higher forms of life, we may infer 
 
 A perfect happiness for a perfect race, 
 If science teaches this, we do not err, 
 And at it, surely, you cannot demur. 
 That science doth foretell a perfect race; 
 You do affirm, as her interpreter; 
 Then if you with your science would keep pace 
 You must, for man, a perfect happiness find place. 
 
 1 54 With all his aspirations in full play, 
 
 With which kind nature fills his grasping mind, 
 To the dark thought that he must pass away, 
 Forever, he can never be resigned, 
 Hence perfect happiness he could never find. 
 He must have life eternal as his dower, 
 Where he shall reach perfection of his kind, 
 Clothed as he may be, with most wondrous 
 power, 
 Or else be wretched there, on that transfigured shore. 
 
 155 Men may claim pleasure in the pauper thought, 
 That their existence is but for an hour, 
 
 But at a mighty price their peace is bought. 
 Becanse, before the future they may cower, 
 And fear disaster that o'er it may lower, 
 They fly from pain to stark annihilation, 
 With only a negation for their dower, 
 And find in this a reconciliation, 
 To the grim thought of life's complete obliteration. 
 
 156 If pain and guilt were banished from this life, 
 And want and sorrow here could have no home, 
 If man could be exempt from fear and strife, 
 And no calamities could ever come 
 
 Upon the earth, wherever man might roam, 
 Still with such elements of happiness, 
 
92 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 A perfect peace could not be, with the doom 
 Of stark extinction staring in the face, 
 Though everything were bright, he'd live in wretch- 
 edness. 
 
 157 You are unscientific, when you say, 
 
 In face of what your science doth reveal, 
 That man must die and wholly pass away; 
 And with her grandest facts you loosely deal, 
 Science herself doth set the unerring seal 
 Of immortality upon his brow, 
 By your own showing, be it woe or weal 
 To your philosophy. Then why not now 
 Before the God of faith, as well as science, bow. 
 
 158 You speak quite surely of a future race, 
 To come, immensely higher than our own, 
 If you were scientific, as you trace 
 
 Its features, when to such perfection grown, 
 You'd surely see that science hath foreshown 
 What faith disclosed long long before your day. 
 Then tell me which should sit upon the throne; 
 Which hath a right to the superior sway; 
 Science or Faith, tell which shall bear the crown 
 away? 
 
PART III. 
 
 FAITH'S CORONATION. 
 
 [Enter Faith and her daughters; Julian, Herman 
 Ernest; Cceleste and her daughters; Philogia 
 and her daughters ; Chronos, Mars, False 
 Science, Superstition, etc.] 
 Ernest. 
 
 1 The work goes on, the star of Bethlehem rises, 
 Faith, in the ascendant, leads the mighty host 
 Of those assembling to the grand assizes, 
 
 To crown the power that should be uppermost. 
 The proclamation goes to every coast, 
 To summon Principalities and Powers, 
 To test the claims of those in conflict tost. 
 Come, all ye muses, from your Grecian bowers, 
 Come ye great hierarchs, down from your lofty 
 towers. 
 
 2 Come, hoary Chronos, from thine ancient seat, 
 Unlock the mystery of the mighty ages, 
 Which thou hast heard eternities repeat: 
 Come, grand Coeleste, ope thy mystic pages, 
 Disclose all things that have entranced the sages ; 
 Let thy fair daughters thine attendants be. 
 Thine Astrea's flight each loyal heart engages, 
 Thy Terra tells creation's mystery, 
 
 And sweet Pelagia brings the treasures of the sea. 
 
 3 Let Thia come from her aerial heaven, 
 
 And tell us what the clouds and tempests say, 
 
94 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN/ 
 
 When, neath their chariot wheels, the sky is riven; 
 Let Flora, too, her plants and trees array, 
 And Palea bring her birds and beasts, that play 
 And sing among the trees and o'er the land. 
 Let rosy Hygeia man's form display, 
 Psyche reveal the soul with her sweet hand, 
 And staid Archsea tell the march of centuries grand. 
 
 4 Let Clio strike the harp of history, 
 Euterpe sweep the poet's sounding lyre, 
 Thalia ope her comic mystery, 
 
 And warm her laughter with seraphic fire; 
 Melpomene, her tragedy inspire, 
 From the afflatus breathed from Calvary's cross; 
 Erato waken the soft, sweet desire, 
 With pure affection's gold that hath no dross, 
 And soil not her sweet lute with aught that's low 
 or gross. 
 
 5 Let Polyhymnia wake her notes sublime, 
 
 And sing her grandest hymns in praise of God: 
 Let pure Urania strike her harp in time, 
 With suns and planets that obey his nod, 
 Who rules the world with his almighty rod, 
 And let Calliope those heroes sing, 
 Who have in Faith's triumphant footsteps trod 
 Yea let her loud heroic measures ring, [King. 
 To him who shall be crowned our Prophet, Priest and 
 
 6 I call all these as witnesses to-day, 
 Will you now, Julian, the test abide? 
 
 Will you receive, as truth, what they shall say? 
 And you, too, Herman, can you e'en confide 
 Your doubts and fears to them, and let them 
 
 guide 
 You to the answer you have longed to know, 
 To solve all doubt and bid all fear subside? 
 Sure, if they can the long sought knowledge 
 
 show, 
 Then you and I in Faith's triumphant train will go. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 95 
 
 Julian. 
 
 7 As I love nature's beauties passing well, 
 And only seek the truth, whate'er it be, 
 If all these shall the same old story tell, 
 
 No difference then between yourself and me; 
 If Science and your Faith do so agree, 
 Then you and I with all these will join hands, 
 Your Christ we will, as king of glory, see, 
 And, bowing with the bright angelic bands, 
 In adoration wait our king's supreme commands. 
 
 Herman. 
 
 8 I'm weary of my long and fruitless quest, 
 My soul is sadly longing now for rest, 
 
 In all I've found there's naught can satisfy, 
 Show me the Christ and to his arms I'll fly; 
 If all these shall your testimony give 
 Then I am sure my soul and God doth live; 
 Bring on your witnesses, they shall not meet 
 With enemies, — as friends we will them greet; 
 The whole Creation travails now in pain, 
 And sure her travel must not, cannot be in vain. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 9 I summon now the spirits of the dark, 
 To give attention to Faith's vindication: 
 Thou, hoary Superstition, gloomy, stark, 
 Release thy victims from their degradation, 
 And listen to these worthies' attestation. 
 Thou false religion, in thy stolen gown, 
 Attend and hear thy bitter condemnation; 
 Let Persecution, with her bloody crown, 
 
 Cease from her cruel work, and unto Faith bow down. 
 
 io And thou, False Science, who with brazen face, 
 Dar'st to ignore Religion and her God; 
 For the Almighty canst not find a place, 
 Would'st brave the weight of his all-ruling rod, 
 
96 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And tellest men to bow beneath thy nod: 
 Be present, and behold how false thou art, 
 For e'en, in his own temple, thou hast stood 
 And with damned spirits thou hast borne a part, 
 In robbing the Eternal of his creatures' heart. 
 
 11 Fierce Mars, by hosts of bloody furies driven, 
 Rousing to conflict over land and sea, [riven, 
 By whose loud thunders heaven and earth are 
 Before whose march doth peace in terror flee: 
 O, mighty Mars, to-day I summon thee, 
 Unharness now thy steeds, and come thou down, 
 Walk as a footman in this pageantry, 
 
 Undo thy helmet, cease thy lightning frown, 
 Assist in this grand scene, while Faith as queen we 
 crown. 
 
 12 Red-handed Murder: — shake no more thy locks, 
 Fly to the shades and be forever hidden, 
 
 Thy pathway o'er the earth religion blocks, 
 Come not again from thy dark cave unbidden; 
 Hot lust, who, passion's steeds, has shameless 
 
 ridden, 
 Fly thou to lowest hell, and there remain: 
 Ambition, thou, who hast the world bestridden, 
 To spread thy rule o'er sea, and hill, and plain, 
 Bow down, thou shalt not lead to fields of blood 
 
 again. 
 
 13 Cold Avarice, with heart of hardest stone, 
 Who never felt a pang for brother's wo, 
 Whose ear is ever deaf to sufferings' moan, 
 Fly from the world, unto perdition go. 
 
 No more on earth thy stony features show; 
 Covetousness, no more thy grasping greed, 
 That makes thee wish on others wealth to grow, 
 Shall, on thy basely-gotten treasure feed, 
 Go down to hell, and there, with Dives, receive thy 
 meed. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 97 
 
 14 Come, steel-faced Hate, bow at the feet of Love, 
 For she shall break thy hard, unfeeling power; 
 Ye better spirits, coming from above, 
 
 Haste to the assizes, see all evil cower [dower 
 Before sweet Faith, high Heaven's supremest 
 To man, the victim of destroying sin. [mower, 
 Come, thou great Chronos, called the mighty 
 Thou who hast from the first creation been, 
 Do thou, for Faith, the testimony now begin. 
 
 Chronos. 
 
 15 A gloomy messenger I've ever been, 
 To all the races that have harbored sin, 
 
 They say, to cut them down hath been my work, 
 With my sharp scythe, which spareth naught 
 
 that lives, 
 In any rebel world. I know how deep [reach; 
 That scythe can wound, how far its point can 
 I know what it will kill, and what will live, 
 Despite its power. I know the body dies, 
 And yet I know the soul it cannot reach: 
 In mighty swaths it hath a thousand times, 
 Cut down all living things upon the earth; 
 Yet life still spreads and peoples wider climes, 
 More multitudinous are its forms to-day, 
 Than e'er before. The races die, but life 
 Will never die. If it doth disappear 
 In any form, it always reappears, 
 Clothed in some other form. I know its source, 
 Or cause must be immortal, for no cause 
 Can have effect which may be greater than itself. 
 
 16 I know that mere dead matter cannot give 
 That life to anything. I know that life 
 Exists in forms of matter, but it can 
 Never be said to be of the same substance; 
 It organizes matter and its forms 
 
 As such, do reproduce themselves, in types, 
 
98 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Their own. But yet it must be life that gives, 
 Life to their offspring; nothing else can do it. 
 
 17 I saw initial life when it began 
 
 And know it could not start without a cause 
 Outside of matter. And I saw in all 
 The grades of life, as it advanced along 
 Upward on its ascending plane, 
 A power outside itself which gave to it, 
 The increment it needed to project 
 It ever upward to its lofty goal. 
 That power is God, and Faith should have the 
 crown. 
 
 18 Men say that I cut down all living things, 
 But they have all my mission much mistaken, 
 All organisms on earth are doomed to perish, 
 And I but measure off the time of each. 
 And mark the limit which it cannot pass. 
 Some are ephemeral, lasting but a day, 
 
 Some weeks, some months, some years, and some 
 For centuries, and whole millenniums, 
 It is my charge to strike the fatal .knell, 
 When each has reached the limit of its life, 
 But I am not the executioner. 
 
 19 It really is some other hand than mine, 
 That fatefully dissolves each organism, 
 Something that's mortal in each form of life, 
 Compels it to forego its functions, and 
 Then the frail body dies. Why this is so 
 
 I may not tell, nor e'en why death hath reigned 
 On earth since life began, nor whether God 
 Could not create organic forms of life 
 That could not be dissolved, without his word. 
 If he could make them live a thousand years, 
 Then why not make them live a myriad, 
 Or ten myriad, or a million? 
 And if a million, why not forever? 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 99 
 
 20 I may not say, if other worlds are framed 
 To give organic beings life forever. 
 
 I know the angels are immortal, but 
 I may not say if they in bodies dwell, 
 Composed of organisms like your own. 
 I may not, though perhaps I eould, 
 For, with my glass, I count the periods 
 Of planets, suns, and galaxies sublime; 
 Yea, mete the cycles of eternity; 
 But this for you to hear of by and by, 
 For now I may not further speak. 
 
 21 But I have traveled o'er immensities, 
 And counted off almost eternal years, 
 
 Yet have found nothing that forbids the thought 
 
 That life, or soul, or spirit never dies. 
 
 I know it is before the organism 
 
 By which it manifests itself to sense, 
 
 And science hath not proved that it must cease 
 
 When organism ceases; hence it may 
 
 Endure forever, and no one can prove 
 
 That Faith doth bear false witness when she says 
 
 The soul shall never die. And none can prove 
 
 That she speaks falsely when she doth declare 
 
 That life shall be embodied yet again; 
 
 Yea, that the soul and body, when thus joined, 
 
 Shall live united, thus forevermore. 
 
 There's not a voice, in all creation round, 
 
 That hath the power to show her wrong in this; 
 
 Then let her wear the crown. 
 
 22 And this may be why all organic forms 
 Were doomed, from the beginning, to dissolve 
 In death. He who can see the end foreknew, 
 From the first form, when life should reach its 
 
 height 
 In man, and he should with free will be crowned; 
 And, following his impulse, he would sin, 
 
100 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And that his sin would break the harmony 
 Of nature's works; and hence he built a world 
 For his rebellious race where death should reign, 
 To be a great reform-school, for reform 
 Of all who will submit to be reformed — 
 A great dispensary, to heal all souls 
 Of the disease of sin. Hence, all may see, 
 The government of God is on this earth, 
 Provisional, for a revolted realm. 
 Thus death became the penalty to all, 
 Since man, for whom all things below were made, 
 Had sinned, and thus involved all in his fate. 
 But Faith points to a wondrous scheme devised, 
 By which man may escape from sin and death; 
 Therefore, my verdict is again, let her be crowned. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 23 I call Cceleste to the witness-stand; 
 
 She bears the saraph's seal upon her brow, 
 Because she ever stands at God's right hand, 
 And loves the truth — to falsehood ne'er will bow; 
 The staunchest loyalty she doth avow, 
 And loves that God should fill creation's throne. 
 Naught, naughty but what is true will she allow 
 To pass her lips, and all that's true she'll own; 
 Now, grand Ccelestctell us who shall wear the crown. 
 
 C&leste. 
 
 24 My testimony shall my daughters give, 
 For, like their mother, they will ne'er believe 
 Aught but the truth, and, like her, they are loyal, 
 Trained in her school of truth, forever royal, 
 
 As true as truth within the heart of God. 
 They never shrink from bowing at his nod; 
 What he doth tell them they will ever show, 
 And strongly will they love to have it so. [heaven, 
 Now, Astrea, from thy journeyings through the 
 Tell us to whom the crown of empire shall be given. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 101 
 
 Astrea. 
 25 On a chariot of sunbeams, with the lightnings as 
 
 steeds, [outspeeds 
 
 I have dashed through the heavens at rate that 
 The wings of the tempests, that rush thro' the sky, 
 Or the comets that out through immensity fly. 
 I have stopped on the sun, there to view from his 
 
 steep 
 The wonders that lie in creation's great deep. 
 I have scanned the vast bulk of that great orb of 
 
 fire, 
 And on his great seas braved the hurricanes' ire; 
 
 They wheel from his tropics, and circle his poles, 
 Where the chariot of thunder unceasingly rolls, 
 The thunder of winds that incessantly rise, 
 The thunder of flames which mount up to the skies, 
 The thunder that's born from electrical oceans, 
 The thunder of earthquakes in frightful commo- 
 tions; [the storms, 
 I've explored those deep chasms which are rent by 
 Where giants, contending, inflict giant harms. 
 
 I have weighed his vast globe in Philosophy's 
 scales, [ne'er fails. 
 
 And can tell you its weight, for my reckoning 
 I have felt the attractions with which he doth hold 
 The worlds, which for ages around him have roll'd; 
 I have measured their orbits, and traversed the 
 
 space 
 Which separates them from the sun's burning face. 
 Their beautiful motions my soul doth entrance, 
 As forever and ever they move in the dance. 
 
 Those seven bright planets, that roll thro' the sky, 
 All speak of a Maker, that none can deny. 
 'Twas the work of an infinite wisdom to trace 
 Their orbits, encircling vast regions of space; 
 To measure their periods, as outward they run, 
 
102 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 In widening circles, far out from the sun; 
 Omnipotence only could roll them along, [song. 
 And make them keep time to creation's grand 
 
 The multiplied motions of those mighty spheres 
 Mark off, on the dial, days, weeks, months and 
 
 years; [light, 
 
 And, rolling majestic through the sun's flaming 
 They display the bright glories of day and of night; 
 Their moons walk in brightness, in heaven's great 
 
 deep, 
 Awakening the stars which by day are asleep. 
 All speak of a Being who brought them to birth, 
 Of Him who created the heaven and earth. 
 
 I have dashed to the pole-star, its glory to share, 
 And counted the suns in the great Northern Bear; 
 My chariot hath rolled on the vast stellar plains, 
 Where mild Cassiopeia in queenliness reigns; 
 I have stood on the rock where Andromeda fair 
 Was chained, in her beauty, and left to despair; 
 And my steeds have outstripped, in the chariot's 
 
 race, 
 The greyhounds of Bootes, in flying thro' space. 
 
 I have wheeled through the signs of Zodiac, all, 
 And have seen them march forth at Jehovah's 
 
 great call; 
 I have traversed Orion, and loosened his bands, 
 My steeds have swept over the Nebulae's sands, 
 Where the surf of the galaxies beat on the shore 
 Of immensity's ocean, in time evermore, 
 With creation's cantata, the music of spheres, 
 Prolonged thro' duration unmeasured by years. 
 
 But in length, or in breadth, or in depth, or in 
 
 height, 
 As I through creation have taken my flight, 
 I have nowhere detected one dissonant word, 
 In the anthems the universe ever hath heard, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 103 
 
 Which forever and ever do celebrate God, 
 And woo all his creatures to bow at his nod; 
 But planets and galaxies join in his praise, 
 As the harp of creation doth utter its lays. 
 
 Wicked men have endeavored my truth to suborn, 
 Their many false systems of thought to adorn; 
 They would have me proclaim, in my flight 
 
 through the sky, 
 That Faith, in creation, hath told us a lie; 
 But I see through the heavens her lines have 
 
 gone forth, [the earth. 
 
 With the words she has spoken to the ends of 
 Their music the clamor of falsehood shall drown; 
 My suffrage shall be for her — give her the crown. 
 
 Cceleste. 
 
 26 My Astrea hath soared through deeps' above, 
 And showed how suns and galaxies do move, ■ 
 All in obedience to His high behest, 
 
 Who doth creation with its wealth invest. 
 Let Terra come from the great deeps below, 
 And the dark mysteries of those regions show; 
 Tell us if ever, in the vast profound, 
 She hears one single, sole, discordant sound, 
 Against that God who laid the earth's foundations, 
 As, rocks on rocks, they rose in numberless grada- 
 tions. 
 
 Terra. 
 
 27 O mother, I obey your voice, with joy and buoy- 
 
 ant hope, [ope. 
 
 And to these eager witnesses the truth I gladly 
 Not all my revelations can I make to them to-day, 
 For men are yet incompetent with ease to track 
 
 my way. 
 But all the truth they've heard from me, and all 
 
 that they shall hear, [there is no fear. 
 
 Shall ne'er dispute the words of faith — of that 
 
104 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Though men have sought my words to turn against 
 
 the words of Faith, [by moil or scathe. 
 
 She still doth stand, in aspect grand, untouched 
 
 I have explored, with wondering eyes, the secrets 
 of the earth, 
 
 And have brought forth, and given to men, 
 gems of the rarest worth — 
 
 The gold and silver in the mines, and riches with- 
 out end — [true friend. 
 
 And so have ever shown to him that I am his 
 
 I've lifted to his wondering gaze the scenes where 
 life began, [ator's plan. 
 
 And followed in its upward trend the great Cre- 
 
 With reverence, I have turned o'er the earth's 
 vast rocky pages, [blest, grandest sages. 
 
 And read a story there which thrills earth's no- 
 
 I saw and heard when the eternal Word 
 
 Commanded earth to rise, 
 To join in flight, midst flaming light, 
 
 Her sisters in the skies. 
 I saw Him form, in fire and storm, 
 
 The solid world below, 
 Uplift the rocks, midst tempests' shocks, 
 
 Which made the oceans flow 
 Down to the deeps, in waterv heaps, 
 
 And leave the mountains bare, 
 With plains and vales, and sunny dales, 
 
 And rivers flowing there; 
 Where lakelets lie, beneath the sky, 
 
 And glitter in the sun, 
 With sea and land, and all things grand, 
 
 When His whole work was done. 
 
 The finny tribes, which Faith describes, 
 
 I saw come at His word; 
 The birds that fly, beneath the sky, 
 
 The same great mandate heard. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 105 
 
 All things that creep, or crawl, or leap, 
 
 Beneath or on the ground, 
 To life were stirred by the same Word, 
 
 Through all the world around. 
 The life that fills a thousand hills, 
 
 Throughout the world afar, 
 I saw arise, with glad surprise — 
 
 All obiects of his care. 
 All bleating folds, in desert wolds, 
 
 Or in the valleys green, 
 At his command filled many a land, 
 
 Where skipping lambs are seen. 
 
 The beasts that roam, and find their home 
 
 Far in the wilderness, 
 The bird of Jove that soars above, 
 
 Perched on the beetling ness; 
 The wolf that growls, with hunger howls, 
 
 The lions in their den, 
 All, all do share this sovereign care, 
 
 Though enemies of men. 
 And in his time to fate sublime; 
 
 I saw man walking forth, 
 By the same nod of nature's God, 
 
 The noblest of the earth. 
 Faith doth with me in this agree, 
 
 There's not a jarring chord 
 In all the song that rolls along, 
 
 Through this revealed word. 
 
 She had not known what she hath shown, 
 
 If God had not revealed it, 
 For I with care had everywhere, 
 
 Six thousand years concealed it. 
 But now indeed as she hath need, 
 
 Against the doubting sages, 
 The same things show which she did know 
 
 For ages and for ages. 
 
106 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 The order trace of every race 
 
 That rose in the gradation, 
 Just as she told in days of old, 
 
 Revealing the creation. 
 Don't read her books with doubting looks 
 
 They tell the same old story, 
 I tell to you in accents true 
 
 With words conciliatory. 
 
 I do rejoice in heart and voice 
 
 To stand in these assizes, 
 And testify that she and I, 
 
 Appear in no disguises. 
 To the same view we both are true 
 
 And bow to the same God, 
 But she controls all loyal souls 
 
 And wins them to his nod. 
 While vengeful hate insatiate, 
 
 She turns to melting love, 
 She conquers death with her sweet breath, 
 
 And leads to life above. 
 This far exceeds all precious meeds, 
 
 That science can bring down, 
 Let all proclaim her splendid name 
 
 And bid her wear the crown. 
 
 Cceleste. 
 
 28 The enemies of Faith, have strongly tried 
 To make my Terra say that she hath lied, 
 But vainly tried, as these confessions show, 
 For she at one with Faith will ever go. 
 Now let Pelagia, from her watery home, 
 As witness to these grand assizes come, 
 And tell me if the voices of the sea 
 Have ever uttered any other plea, 
 Than Faith hath made in the behalf of God 
 
 As o'er its great expanse, the ages vast have trod. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 107 
 
 Pelagia. 
 29 O mother, I obey- thy voice, 
 
 Thy will hath ever been my choice, 
 To speak the words of truth to these, 
 There's naught on earth can better please. 
 It was my part the watch to keep, 
 When darkness brooded o'er the deep; 
 When void and formless was the world: 
 The elements in chaos whirled. 
 
 I saw the Eternal Spirit trace, 
 His footsteps on the water's face; 
 When first he to creation stirred, 
 And chaos heard his mighty word. 
 
 When God did say: "Let there be light," 
 And light upsprang from primal night; 
 I saw the splendors of the day, 
 Which flashed above the waters' spray. 
 I saw the firmament uplift, 
 Which rose beneath the tempest's drift, 
 Dividing seas beneath the heaven, 
 From waters by the tempest driven. 
 
 The cooling mists dissolved in spray; 
 The darksome clouds did pass away; 
 They fell in floods all o'er the earth, 
 Before the mountains came to birth. 
 
 The earth's whole face was one vast deep, 
 Where waves with storms did toss and leap, 
 Until at God's supreme command, 
 The waters fled from off the land. 
 I saw the plains as they arose, 
 Pushed up by subterranean throes, 
 Of titans struggling neath the earth, 
 To bring the continents to birth. 
 
 I saw the mountains lift their heads, 
 Aroused from their primeval beds, 
 
108 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 By groaning earth in labor pains, 
 And marshal in majestic chains. 
 
 The cataracts thundered down their steeps, 
 And hastened to their watery deeps, 
 When first the dry land did appear, 
 And the great mountains did uprear. 
 
 The mists did from the seas arise, 
 
 And, driven by winds across the skies, 
 
 They fell on land in summer rains, 
 
 And clothed with green the hills and plains. 
 
 The herb, the grass, the tree, the grains, 
 Prepared the way for the long trains 
 Offish, in seas, of birds, in air, 
 And beasts that wander everywhere. 
 
 Thus I with Faith in full agree; 
 What she reveals, is known to me, 
 About the floods that rise and fall, 
 Or rest on this terrestrial ball. 
 
 The earth and seas alike proclaim, 
 The honors that surround her name. 
 The eras of creation stand 
 As she disclosed in visions grand. 
 
 Before the world could hear our voice, 
 Men did in her sweet words rejoice, 
 Because the God of Science told 
 Her these great truths in lines of gold. 
 
 In all the voices of the seas, 
 That swell beneath the wooing breeze, 
 Or thunder in the tempest grand, 
 Not one, doth her words countermand. 
 
 False men have searched the seas profound, 
 As they have searched beneath the ground 
 For contradictions of her word, 
 But none from thence were ever heard. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 109 
 
 Thus all their shrewd objections fail, 
 And Faith' doth everywhere prevail 
 O'er all her foes the world around, 
 My verdict is, let her be crowned. 
 
 Cceleste. 
 
 30 I knew Pelagia's voice would well accord, 
 
 With all that Faith hath heard from Nature's 
 
 Lord, 
 The heavens, the earth, the seas alike proclaim, 
 The glories that surround her mighty name; 
 Now, daughter Thia, unto you is given, 
 To know the secrets of the aerial heaven, 
 As thou dost hear the thunder peal on high, 
 Whose chariot wheels bright blaze across the sky, 
 As thou dost sweep through all the upper air, 
 
 Hast thou e'er heard the sceptic's witness anywhere? 
 
 Thia. 
 I've travelled through the upper air, 
 
 In chariot of the storm, 
 And I have seen the tempests there 
 
 In cloudy legions form: 
 I've seen the thunder mount his car, 
 
 And grasp the bolts of Jove; 
 I've heard their crashing near and far, 
 
 While flashing from above. 
 
 The rains in noisy torrents pour 
 
 Down from their cloudy steeps, 
 Supply the streams from shore to shore, 
 
 And fill the vasty deeps; 
 The winds released from secret caves, 
 
 To mighty conflict driven, 
 Roam where the thunder monarch raves 
 
 Upon the cope of heaven. 
 The winds and thunders yoked amain, 
 
 With waters from the sky, 
 
110 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 In fury sweep o'er hill and plain, 
 As on their tracks they fly, 
 
 Forming the whirlwind in its wrath, 
 Which scatters far and near, 
 
 Dire wreck and ruin in i.s path, 
 Shaking the world with fear. 
 
 This wondrous air supports the life, 
 
 And feeds all living things 
 With vital breath amidst the strife 
 
 Which our existence brings. 
 In unseen buckets it uplifts, 
 
 The waters from below, 
 The fount wherein the tempest drifts, 
 
 Of all the floods that flow. 
 
 It buoys the plume of every bird, 
 
 That dares the heavenly height; 
 With strength the eagle doth engird, 
 
 For his adventurous flight. 
 The morning lark it doth upbear, 
 
 Far out of mortal sight, 
 And floats her song from middle air, 
 
 Where she is lost in light. 
 
 Expanded by the breath of flame, 
 
 It hurls the bolts afar, 
 Which hurtle in the murd'rous game, 
 
 Played by the demon, War. 
 Confined beneath the solid earth, 
 
 Enraged by hidden flame, 
 It gives the frightful earthquake birth, 
 
 Which shakes earth's mighty frame. 
 
 The storm and thunder it awakes, 
 
 In the volcano's breast ; 
 And the sky-piercing mountain shakes, 
 
 Beneath its strong behest. 
 The flaming lava floods uplift, 
 
 And pour down from the height, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? Ill 
 
 While pitch-black clouds far outward drift, 
 In their ill-omened flight. 
 
 It is the medium of all sound 
 
 That falls upon the ear ; 
 Within its bosom peals resound, 
 
 That fill all hearts with fear. 
 The crash of thunders in the sky, 
 
 Of earthquakes in the deep; 
 The roar of whirlwinds as they fly, 
 
 And floods that downward sweep. 
 
 It bears the melody of song, 
 
 Through forest and through grove ; 
 Earth's rolling anthems doth prolong, 
 
 Praising the God of love. 
 It floats the music of the hills, 
 
 In many a gentle breeze; 
 And the sweet song of mountain rills, 
 
 And zephyrs 'mongst the trees. 
 
 In all the voices it doth float, 
 
 In thunder or in song, 
 I hear not one diseordant note, 
 
 Borne in its breast along. 
 All with religion well agree, 
 
 Proclaiming God afar; 
 There is no strife twixt Faith and me, 
 
 The crown I'd have her wear. 
 
 C celeste. 
 
 32 We've heard the witness from the starry heaven, 
 And from the earth as once by conflict riven ; 
 And from the seas borne on from shore to shore, 
 And from the aerial heights where tempests roar; 
 My Thia, like her sisters, speaks the truth, 
 For she hath loved Jehovah from her youth. 
 Come, Flora, decked in beauties of the spring, 
 What witness like thy sisters canst thou bring? 
 
112 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Hast thou not heard the voices of the trees, 
 Of plants and flowers, and grass, that rustles in the 
 breeze? 
 
 Flora. 
 
 33 I muse among the mountains, 
 
 I sing among the vales; 
 Amid the noise of fountains, 
 
 That sparkle through the dales. 
 The spray that feeds the roses, 
 
 Beneath the sun's warm glow, 
 To me the truth discloses, 
 
 Like all things here below. 
 
 The lily whispers sweetly 
 
 The secrets of her heart; 
 The violet discreetly, 
 
 Her knowledge doth impart; 
 Where'er for witness seeking 
 
 In glen or bosky dell, 
 The ferns and grasses speaking, 
 
 The same sweet story tell. 
 
 The mighty oak that raises, 
 
 His giant arms on high, 
 The great Creator praises, 
 
 Though leaning 'gainst the sky. 
 Its form the Maker scanning, 
 
 While in the acorn's shell; 
 Its future greatness planning, 
 
 Reared the grand structure well. 
 
 Through all the vegetation, 
 
 That clothes the world around, 
 I hear a sweet cantation, 
 
 A rapture breathing sound; 
 Its notes forever saying 
 
 God careth for the flowers, 
 Their beauteous forms displaying, 
 
 Fed by the summer showers. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 113 
 
 A king in all his glory, 
 
 Is not arrayed like these, 
 He ne'er can tell the story, 
 
 That's whispered 'mongst the trees; 
 The life of plants proclaiming, 
 
 A God the world around; 
 Its wondrous textures framing, 
 
 Commands that Faith be crowned. 
 
 Ccsleste. 
 
 34 These five bright daughters have their witness 
 
 spoken, 
 And, in no single word with Faith have broken; 
 Whatever truths they have to men disclosed, 
 Not one can ever be to her opposed. 
 The life of plants that bloom on tree or sod, 
 Can be but by an all-creating God. 
 Palea, scanning animate creation, 
 Will now present her forceful attestation; 
 Tell us, if in the life of earth, or air, 
 Or sea, she finds Faith's contradiction anywhere. 
 
 Palea. 
 
 35 I have told to man but little, 
 
 Of the wonders of my kingdom, 
 I have kept them to reveal them, 
 To reward the earnest seeker, 
 As the realms of life he searches. 
 What life is, I have not told him, 
 How a blade of grass can flourish; 
 How the tiniest living creature, 
 Comes to life and lives a moment, 
 .How all animate creation 
 Feeds upon the grains and grasses, 
 And the breezes and the sunbeams. 
 Deepest mystery hangs o'er them, 
 How they live, or how they perish: 
 Life and death are each a mystery. 
 
114 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Yet I've shown him many wonders; 
 
 All his greatest thoughts surpassing, 
 
 Led him o'er the track of ages, 
 
 Up the grade that life hath mounted, — 
 
 Shown him myriad forms of being, 
 
 Myriad genera and species, 
 
 From the lowest to the highest, 
 
 Yet, in all that I have shown him, 
 
 Such a thing as self-creation, 
 
 Or spontaneous generation, 
 
 Never has been known to science; 
 
 Never, in a single instance. 
 
 Men have searched creation over, 
 
 Tested solids, fluids, gases, 
 
 Searching for the primal substance, 
 
 Mid the bioplasmic wonders, 
 
 But no life without an author, 
 
 Ever yet has been discovered. 
 
 All effects must have their causes, 
 Nothing causeless e'er existed, 
 Only the great Cause of causes, 
 Which had never a beginning. 
 But, all things with a beginning, 
 Must by some force have been started; 
 Planets, in their mighty movements, 
 Were first moved by some great mover, 
 So this life, in its first motions, 
 Must have had some force to start it; 
 Something in it, but not of it, 
 Must have given it a being, — 
 Given it power of reproduction, 
 In the thousand forms you see it. 
 The first power that thus imparted 
 Life to inorganic matter, 
 Must have had that life before it; 
 None could have bestowed on matter 
 What had not been in possession. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 115 
 
 So, whatever was the giver 
 
 Of the life that fills all nature, 
 
 Must have been a living being ; 
 
 Lifeless matter could not do it. 
 
 In the bioplastic forces 
 
 Which build up all life's creations, 
 
 There must be co-ordination 
 
 By some power that stands behind them, 
 
 Working by a plan forecasted 
 
 By some mind of wondrous knowledge, 
 
 Snowing all where they must labor 
 
 In their building up the body. 
 
 To build up a form so wondrous, 
 
 And so varied in its functions, 
 
 Surely must require a being 
 
 Of unbounded power and wisdom. 
 
 Faith declares this mighty being 
 Is the Lord, the great Jehovah, 
 The Creator and Upholder 
 Of all things in the creation. 
 In all sections of my kingdom, 
 In its length and breadth forever, 
 Stretching through untold duration, 
 Nothing ever peeped or muttered, 
 In accord with all true science, 
 To dispute her truthful witness. 
 Everything now living, breathing, 
 Testifies of that Great Being, 
 In one voice proclaims his praises; 
 Therefore, in these grand assizes, 
 Let her take the crown and wear it. 
 
 Cczleste. 
 36 Men of false science have tried hard to show 
 That life, if they could all its secrets know, 
 Would prove the gloomy fact that "Death ends 
 all;" 
 
116 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 That soul and body perish at his call. 
 Palea tells us that a God must be, 
 To float the living world on life's great sea; 
 She tells us that the wondrous life of man 
 Shows a great Author's pre-existent plan. 
 New let Hygeia tell us if she find 
 Aught that declares mortality to soul or mind. 
 
 Hygeia. 
 I may not answer, though I know, 
 All that mankind would have me show, 
 
 Concerning this great theme; 
 But I can say that the desire 
 Of man for that Promethean fire, 
 
 Cannot be all a dream. 
 
 I am immortal, though my reign 
 Is checked by sin, disease and pain, 
 
 And I am thus cast down; 
 The tyrant Death subverts my power, 
 Makes all mankind before him cower, 
 
 And so usurps my crown. 
 
 But I do feel, within my arms, 
 Power to repair his fearful harms, 
 
 To reassert my right, 
 To make his realm of darkness end, 
 And through its gloomy regions send 
 
 Bright rays of quickening light. 
 
 If I may paint fair childhood's cheek 
 With roses that so sweetly speak 
 
 Of life, and health, and joy; 
 If I may move man's stalwart arms, 
 And clothe sweet womanhood with charms, 
 
 Almost without alloy; 
 
 If flowers, and strength, and woman's charms, 
 Resist disease, with all its harms, 
 E'en for a single day, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 117 
 
 Why not for weeks, or months, or years, 
 Or centuries, as foretold by seers? 
 
 Indeed, why not for aye? 
 The star on evening's coronet, 
 Which God in the beginning set, 
 
 In brightness there to shine, 
 Hath shone for ages there untold, 
 Still shines as in the days of old, 
 
 And never may decline. 
 Because the fountain of her light 
 Has ever been unfailing, quite; 
 
 She shines in glory still. 
 Since God Almighty is its source, 
 He feeds it with exhaustless force, 
 
 And shine she ever will. 
 And if we lose her cheering gleam, 
 It is the clouds that veil her beam, 
 
 Far, far beneath her throne. 
 High, high above the reeling rack, 
 She still doth shine, and hath no lack 
 
 Of splendors, all her own. 
 And so the star of life shall rise, 
 To shine forever in the skies 
 
 Of immortality; 
 God so feeds life that it shall stand, 
 Upheld forever by his hand, 
 
 And man will never die. 
 It rests upon the will of God, 
 Who rules all things beneath his nod, 
 
 How long all things shall stand. 
 So light, and life, and joy shall be 
 Prolonged to all eternity, 
 
 Supported by his hand. 
 Should he withdraw his aid, the sun, 
 Which hath, through countless ages, run 
 
 His ever-glorious round, 
 
118 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Would sink in gloom in starless night, 
 And, lost in chaos all his light, 
 
 Would nevermore abound. 
 I know the soul, or life, of man, 
 Before the organism, began — 
 
 Tis that doth organize; 
 So when its organs are decayed, 
 And all beneath the dust are laid, 
 
 It shall in glory rise; 
 Rise victor over death and hell, 
 In fairer scenes for aye to dwell, 
 
 Above the clouds of earth, 
 When it shall other dwelling make, 
 And higher form of beauty take, 
 
 Of richest, rarest worth. 
 Yes, in the resurrection morn, 
 Its dwelling I shall then adorn, 
 
 With glory now unknown — 
 A house eternal, built of God, 
 Forever by immortals trod, 
 
 Near his resplendent throne. 
 And so, when Death hath wrought God's will, 
 And thus his mission shall fulfill, 
 
 He falls to rise no more, 
 And the eclipse shall pass away, 
 That veiled this life from endless day, 
 
 And be forever o'er. 
 Then I shall paint the bloom of health 
 Upon all cheeks, in rarest wealth, 
 
 Which nevermore shall fade; 
 The bloom that here is for an hour 
 Will then, by God's life-giving power, 
 
 Be all unceasing made. 
 In all my realms of life I find 
 No voice that tells me that the mind 
 
 Of man may ever die; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 119 
 
 And Faith the voice of doubt shall drown, 
 And she shall wear the fadeless crown 
 Of immortality. 
 
 Cceleste. 
 
 38 Well done, Hygeia, sweetly thou dost sing, 
 As thy fair sisters, of Creation's King. 
 
 If others plead the cause of Faith as well, 
 Who shall receive the crown we all can tell. 
 The doubt of the agnostic seems to yield, 
 And even Julian may quit the field. 
 But stronger witness we have yet to hear; 
 My loveliest daughter, speak — my Psyche dear — 
 Tell us if thou know'st aught within thy realm, 
 That should the hope of life eternal overwhelm. 
 
 Psyche. 
 
 39 A spirit immortal, these worthies may see, 
 The" soul of all nature, embodied in me. 
 
 I range o'er creation, with all races of men, 
 And the speech of each nation forever I ken. 
 There's a language unwritten that flows from the 
 
 soul, 
 Not in words, but in feeling, expressing the whole 
 Wide range of affection, of love and desire, 
 And every ambition to which men aspire. 
 In the hut or the wigwam, I've heard the same 
 
 speech, 
 Which the wild, roving Tartar forever doth teach: 
 In the tent of the Arab, on the wild desert sand, 
 It is uttered in accents which all understand; 
 In the homes of the Arctic, where icy storms rage, 
 It has found an expression in every age; 
 In the Indian jungle, in the Hottentot's kraal, 
 It is heard in the accents of song or of wail. 
 In glen or on mountain, in cave or in den, 
 In crowded and lonely habitations of men, 
 
120 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 By the long, flowing rivers, by the wide-spread- 
 ing lakes, 
 
 By the outspreading oceans, the same speech 
 awakes, 
 
 In palace or hovel, in tent or afield, 
 
 This language, unspoken, is never concealed; 
 
 In the great, crowded city, where the multitude 
 schemes, 
 
 I read the same speech in their acts or their dreams 
 
 The old understand it, as well as the young; 
 'Tis for every condition, the vernacular tongue; 
 The learned cannot speak it more plainly nor well 
 Than ignorant peasant its meaning can tell. 
 Inthe great congregation, in dense-crowded street, 
 In the halls of the college, its accents you meet; 
 In the tent of the soldier, on the ship-wrecking 
 
 wave, 
 By the mariner uttered in tones light or grave; 
 More melodious than anthems sung aloud by the 
 
 ehoir, 
 Or the song of the maiden, that floats on the air; 
 More full than the speech of academy-halls; 
 More subtle in meaning, its utterance falls; 
 More grand than the Latin, more polished than 
 
 Greek, 
 More mighty than English or German can speak. 
 It speaks in the glances of friends or of foes; 
 Through all human action its utterance flows. 
 
 It tells us of pleasure, it tells us of pain, 
 It shows us the passions in characters plain, 
 It utters the sorrows that mortals annoy, 
 It utters their longings, it utters their joy; 
 It speaks on the cheek, in the pallor of fear; 
 It speaks on the features, in looks of despair. 
 'Tis the speech of affection, the language of love, 
 The problems of reason its utterances prove; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 121 
 
 It points men to heaven, it tells them of God, 
 And bids them bow humbly at the beck of his 
 It speaks of a future, it bids men to hope, [nod; 
 Immortality's portals before them may ope. 
 In all it hath spoken, I never have heard 
 One single denial of Faith's greatest word, 
 That tells us man's being, immortal and grand, 
 May live on forever, at God's own right hand. 
 
 My range is still wider, o'er nature's fair fields, 
 Where every object the same language yields — 
 A speech that is uttered by birds and by flowers, 
 In rustling wildwood, in bright, rosy bowers, 
 In the tints of the lily, in the breath of the rose, 
 In the trailing arbutus, first-born from the snows, 
 In the sweet morning-glory, that opens her eyes 
 When the sun is arising in orient skies; 
 In all the sweet flowers of mead and champagne, 
 Of garden or wildwood, the language is plain; 
 In the fluttering banners that wave in the trees, 
 In the low-breathing zephyr or loud-piping breeze, 
 In the glare of the lightning, the roar of the storm, 
 In the trump of the thunder when the storm- 
 legions form, 
 In the song on the shingles of the soft summer 
 rain, [plain; 
 
 In the rush of mad torrents down mountain, o'er 
 In the roar of the cataract, or gurgle of rills, 
 As they slide through the meadows, or glide 
 
 down the hills; 
 In the roar of the ocean that beats on the shore, 
 In all nature's voices, 'tis heard evermore. 
 
 To me it is given to know the same speech, 
 And to all that desire it, its meaning to teach; 
 And thus may the lily, the rose, and the pink, 
 And the sweet-scented hyacinth, tell what they 
 think. 
 
122 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 They bud in the spring-time, they bloom for a 
 
 day, 
 Then on their stems wither, and fall, and decay; 
 But the life in their petals inheres in the germ, 
 Which forever continues their likeness to form. 
 That life in the plant, in the leaf, in the flower, 
 Is ever the same, though it change hour by hour. 
 The life in the seed-germ, like the spirit in man, 
 Never dies in the changes of nature's shrewd plan; 
 It remains, though the body may fall and decay, 
 To rear up new homes, and its splendors display. 
 Thus the promised arising of man from the tomb 
 Is suggested by Nature in her early spring bloom, 
 And the voices of doubters shall ever be drowned 
 By Nature demanding that Faith shall becrown'd. 
 
 But for all things around us that speak of a God. 
 And bid all his creatures bow low at his nod, 
 And hint of a future to man's thinking soul, 
 I find more within me, by far, than the whole 
 Of external nature, that speaks the same word; 
 Of a spirit immortal, that yields to its Lord; 
 Of a glorious future, a heaven of bliss, 
 In a region far brighter than a world such as this. 
 There is stamped on man's being ineffaceably there 
 A thruth, which forever the soul must declare, 
 That in all the creation by nature's own laws, 
 No movement was e'er produced without cause, 
 Men could not have started to being so grand, 
 Without a first impulse from some mighty hand. 
 The infinite wisdom displayed in his frame; 
 The marks of design then, a maker proclaim: 
 The indubitable traces of wonderful thought, 
 Tell me a great thinker alone could have sought 
 The end of creation existing in man, 
 Conforming his being to prevenient plan. 
 
 I see in man's nature a longing desire, 
 
 For a future existence, which must be a fire, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 123 
 
 By deity kindled in all of the race, 
 And in it a purpose we surely can trace, 
 To either torment him, or give him a crown, 
 And enthrone him where death can no more 
 
 cast him down. 
 The former, a being all good and all true, 
 Just merely in mockery never could do, 
 And when you have studied, in nature his plan, 
 You find in all beings, in bird, beast and man, 
 Wherever an instinct awakens desire, 
 A something to sate it provided somewhere. 
 No natural longing for what can be thought, 
 E'er fails to be satisfied lawfully sought. 
 This desire universal, implanted in man, 
 Proclaims life eternal in God's mighty plan. 
 
 And then in the conscience, a witness you find 
 Of future assizes to mortals assigned, 
 A strong confirmation, that God there must be, 
 And a soul to be judged then, from him never 
 
 free. 
 This strong apprehension of a judgment to come 
 From a higher tribunal, than finds here a home, 
 Which dwells in the bosom of every man, 
 Proclaims such assizes in nature's great plan: 
 That wrong shall be righted and crime shall re- 
 ceive, 
 The due retribution which justice would give. 
 
 In a world so unequal, where rogues can go free, 
 And crimes go unpunished, true conscience must 
 
 see 
 That a time of reversal most surely must come, 
 When crime goes to judgment, virtue goes home. 
 That time must be future, when man's work is 
 
 done, [king's throne. 
 
 And the judgment seat higher than an earthly 
 So reason, and instinct, and conscience agree, 
 
124 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 That Faith speaketh truly about what shall be: 
 Then, wreathe her fair temples with victory's 
 
 crown, 
 And let all the world at her altar bow down. 
 
 C celeste. 
 
 40 We've heard my Psyche utter her sweet speech. 
 Now we will hear what Archaea can teach, 
 Canst thou my daughter, on this subject cast 
 Light from the foot prints of the ages past? 
 From ruined palace and from crumbling wall, 
 From buried generations canst thou call, 
 
 True witnesses, who shall to-day be heard, 
 In confirmation of that sacred word, 
 Which tells of God and his creation vast, 
 And an immortal soul whose youth shall ever last? 
 
 Archcea. 
 
 41 I've searched among the records of the olden 
 
 time, 
 Among the histories of every age and clime, 
 I've seen great empires rise, enlarge, decay and 
 
 fall, [them call, 
 
 I've seen great chiefs their mighty hosts around 
 And lead them forth to conquest of extended 
 
 realms; [o'erwhelms; 
 
 I've seen the assault in war, which every foe 
 I've mused o'er battle fields, on many a gory 
 
 plain, [campaign, 
 
 And followed armies through full many a long 
 
 Where the way-marks of their marches were vast 
 
 heaps of soldiers slain. 
 
 I've heard the orphan's cry, the wail of widow's 
 
 woe, 
 Seen pestilence and death, o'er blasted nations go, 
 Seen cruel war and carnage so repeated o'er, 
 That mount, and vale, and plain have run with 
 
 human gore, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN-? 125 
 
 But all those overturnings have displayed his 
 
 hand, 
 To point the longing heart to visions bright and 
 
 grand; [hold, 
 
 To map out for the nations, where they might be- 
 Wonders from heaven come, which could not 
 
 then be told, [gold. 
 
 To lead them on and upward to behold an age of 
 
 God hath rolled on the ages, through hard strife 
 
 and blood, [hath stood, 
 
 While on each mighty tempest his great form 
 
 To guide the flying chargers, that upon the storm, 
 
 Draw forth his thunder chariot while his legions 
 
 form- [aside, 
 
 No tempest flood, nor rain-drop, turns for once 
 
 From its predestined mission, but doth true abide, 
 
 Obedient to his great will, who sent them forth; 
 
 The storm fulfills its destined mission on the earth, 
 
 The bolt flies home to the sure goal, for which it 
 
 came to birth. 
 
 No star forever wanders from its destined path, 
 No atom e'er is lost amidst the tempests' scath, 
 But men in all their courses do his word fulfill, 
 Tending to some grand end in his omniscient 
 
 will. 
 So all the strife, and wars, and revolutions dread, 
 Before which peace, and happiness, and life have 
 
 fled, [cree, 
 
 Have all shown a grand purpose in his great de- 
 A preparation that man might his glory see, 
 Opening the way for Christ to come when his own 
 
 time shall be. 
 
 I've searched among the ruins, where great cities 
 
 stood, [in flood, 
 
 Which prophets once predicted should sink down 
 
 Or flame, or waste by war and pilage to their fall, 
 
126 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And in the wide and sad debris that covers all, 
 I find strong attestations to the book we love, 
 Which prove its birth and high descent was from 
 
 above. 
 I read it on the tablets, Layard brought to light, 
 In Nineveh o'er which the centuries had ta'en 
 
 flight, [site. 
 
 And inCyclopean dwellings found on Bashun's ancient 
 
 Great Babylon is eloquent with this old lore, 
 Confirming what old prophets said of her of yore: 
 Jerusalem, the city of Judea's king, [bring, 
 
 Doth from its crumbling ruins the same witness 
 And all the hills of Palestine which Jesus trod, 
 Seem now to echo with the foot-steps of our God: 
 The ruin we there see, proclaimed in ancient days, 
 While she was young and beautiful in winsome 
 ways, [high praise. 
 
 Attest that Faith is truthful and all speak in her 
 
 I see a standing miracle in the old race 
 
 Of Israel who hath wandered centuries without 
 
 place, [choice, 
 
 Or habitation, though they once were God's own 
 Favored to hear from the Shekinah his own voice, 
 Now wandering wide beneath his curse in every 
 
 land, [hand, 
 
 Yet kept, among the nations, by his mighty 
 For some grand destination when the time shall 
 
 come, [gathered home, 
 
 When that long wandering people shall be 
 
 With songs and everlasting joy no more for aye to 
 
 roam. 
 
 In Petra's sculptured desolations you may read, 
 The same true attestations if you'll give them 
 
 heed; 
 Its stones of emptiness the same old truth reveal, 
 How God will with rebellious kings and peoples 
 
 deal. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 127 
 
 In all the many old inscriptions that I find, 
 I read the utterances of the Eternal mind, 
 All proving that the word is ever, ever true, 
 Which was the old world's hope and should be 
 
 of the new; 
 The ruins of old realms are thus supporting Faith's 
 
 clear view. 
 
 In following the steps of human history, 
 
 The truth of this same word I clearly see, 
 
 In the fulfillment of the words in by gone ages, 
 
 Uttered by seers, portrayed in history's ancient 
 
 pages, 
 And in events which daily crowd upon the view, 
 Which naught but prescience ever thus foreknew. 
 Oh, as the ages grandly march in state along, 
 And weave their great events in one victorious 
 
 song [belong. 
 
 Of praise, they say the crown to Faith forever shall 
 
 C celeste. 
 
 42 I'm proud that my fair daughters thus agree 
 With Faith, and none to unbelief from me 
 Hath turned: that they have found the Heaven 
 
 and earth, 
 And sea, and all that ever came to birth 
 In them, old empires too and cities dead, 
 All testify that our sweet Faith hath shed 
 True light o'er all the world. Now once again, 
 We'll have another speak in accents plain. 
 Philogia, hast thou in human speech 
 Found aught that can for Faith another lesson teach? 
 
 Philogia. 
 
 43 I've found a truth in human speech, 
 As I have searched all tribes around, 
 Which doth conclusive lessons teach. 
 To all the world where'er 'tis found: 
 
128 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 You always find a common ground 
 On which all languages are framed, 
 A something in the root or sound, 
 Which does and ever has proclaimed 
 A kindred for all speech however named. 
 
 This points us to a world-wide speech, 
 When all the race spake the same tongue, 
 Which doth a common parent teach, 
 For mankind when the race was young: 
 And this is testimony strong 
 For Faith's account in the creation, 
 And will bring surer proof e'er long, 
 As men pursue investigation 
 And bid us heed her without hesitation. 
 
 It casts a light upon her story, 
 Told of the race on Babel's plains, 
 How man ambitious of great glory, 
 Reared, by great labor, cost and pains, 
 A tower that he might heaven attain. 
 But lest that tower should pierce the heaven, 
 And man should his ambition gain, 
 His speech was to confusion given, 
 And into all the world the race was driven. 
 
 This buttress to the argument, 
 For God's own word is very strong, 
 It is a mighty muniment, 
 Against the Atheists slandering tongue. 
 But other proofs to speech belong, 
 And to my aid I here will call 
 My daughters nine of sweetest song, 
 Who reverently before Christ fall: 
 And Clio thou shalt speak the first of all. 
 
 Clio. 
 
 44 Archaea speaks the words of truth for me. 
 I can add little to what she hath said. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 129 
 
 The purest poetry, man hath ever read, 
 Speaks from the ruins of Antiquity, 
 Confirming what the Lord hath said should be. 
 
 Old Babylon, with all her nations dead, 
 
 In heaps with dust of ages on her head, 
 Repeats this truth though speaking silently. 
 And other cities of the olden time, 
 
 Confirm the words of Faith as ever true. 
 And history, in its onward march sublime, 
 
 In all its epochs doth confirm this view. 
 A thousand voices speak on every hand, — 
 They speak of Christ in accents strong, and sweet 
 and grand. 
 
 Euterpe. 
 
 45 I do rejoice to take the lyre, 
 
 And warmed by sweet poetic fire, 
 
 Of Faith and Love to sing. 
 With all my mind and all my heart, 
 I gladly take my humble part, 
 And my fond offering bring. 
 
 I've sung of love, I've sung of wine, 
 To which men's hearts so much incline; 
 
 To war I've struck the lyre: 
 All passions have inspired my song, 
 Revel hath oft borne me along, 
 
 Roused by unchaste desire. 
 
 But themes like these are low and mean, 
 Befitting me they ne'er have been; 
 
 Those themes of lofty praise, 
 Which love of God in Christ inspire, 
 Well worthy of an angel's lyre, 
 
 Shall hence inspire my lays. 
 
 I'll sing the matchless power of Faith, 
 How she doth triumph over death, 
 And lay all foemen low, 
 
130 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 How kingdoms fall beneath her power 
 And Hell's dark hosts before her cower, 
 And at her footstool bow. 
 
 How mountains fall at her command, 
 Torn from their anchors to the land, 
 
 And plunge into the sea; 
 How Heaven uplifts its gates to her, 
 And all its mighty doors unbar, 
 
 That crowned she may be. 
 
 No name so sweet as she reveals, 
 Which all our wounds and sorrows heals, 
 
 The name to Jesus given: 
 All meaner things, to fill my song 
 To me shall never more belong, 
 
 I'll sing this gift of Heaven. 
 
 Heaven's golden harps in sweet accord, 
 With mine shall praise our glorious Lord, 
 
 And earth henceforth shall ring, 
 With lofty lyrics sounded forth, 
 By all the muses of the earth, 
 
 With song to praise our King. 
 
 Let Faith's fair temples wear the wreath, 
 Which tells her triumph over death, 
 
 She is our sweetest friend: 
 Lo! where her footsteps press the earth, 
 The bloom of Eden blushes forth, 
 
 In beauty ne'er to end. 
 
 Thalia. 
 
 46 My mission hitherto hath been, 
 
 From vulgar herds the laugh to win, 
 
 All careless of my theme; 
 But now no more such low born aim 
 Will I permit to soil my fame; 
 
 My name I will redeem. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 131 
 
 For laughter I will string my lyre 
 And warm it with seraphic fire, 
 
 To waken joyous mirth, 
 Which might an angel's cheek adorn, 
 Like bright Aurora's blushing morn, 
 
 Clothing with smiles the earth. 
 I'll rouse the laughter of the soul, 
 Which spurns all meaner things control, 
 
 With themes all grand and new, 
 With smiles instead of flowing tears; 
 With hope instead of gloomy fears; 
 
 With promise vast and true. 
 And if my comic mask I wear, 
 It shall be that I may thus bear 
 
 Witness against the fool, 
 Who, in his heart hath said, "No God," 
 Creation rose without his nod, 
 
 Meet but for ridicule. 
 
 The mighty words which skeptics use, 
 As if they further would confuse, 
 
 Their own half addled brains, 
 Deserve the keenest satire's thrust, 
 To laugh them out sure would be just, 
 
 And would repay all pains. 
 
 Bathybius Hseckelii, — 
 
 (Their high-flown words all sense defy)—- 
 
 The parent of all life. 
 From it beneath the ocean's wave, 
 They said life rose as from a grave, 
 
 Brought forth in nature's strife. 
 
 So with the instruments to sound, 
 They dived into the deeps profound, 
 
 To show this wondrous thing, 
 Examined by the chemic test — 
 The truth must surely be confessed, — 
 
 Sulphate of lime, they sing. 
 
132 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Bathybius was thus cast down; 
 It surely could not wear the crown 
 
 Of universal life. 
 Into obscurity it goes 
 And there it finds a sure repose, 
 
 At rest for aye from strife. 
 
 Peace to its ashes, but the fame, 
 That it encirled round the name, 
 
 Of bastard science' son. 
 Has withered like the prophet's gourd, 
 With other things no less absurd: 
 
 All will the same course run. 
 
 Hear Herbert Spencer's definition, 
 Of evolution's inanition 
 
 Homogeneity, 
 And Heterogeneity, 
 The first indefinite you see 
 
 With incoherency. 
 And this from that in great causations, 
 Is changed through differentiations. 
 
 That work continuously; 
 Also through wondrous integrations 
 And various stick-together-ations 
 
 As any fool can see, 
 
 Homogeneity, 'tis plain, 
 
 Hath labored, in great strife and pain, 
 
 An offspring to bring forth. 
 Lo! heterogeneity 
 Comes forth the mighty child to be 
 
 To people the wide earth. 
 
 The mountains labored to bring forth, 
 An offspring of most wondrous worth, 
 
 As Horace once did sing, 
 And what d'ye think the upshot was, 
 The effect that followed such a cause? 
 
 A mouse they forth did bring. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 133 
 
 Such definitions ne'er bring down, 
 High sounding words can never drown, 
 
 The clear, sweet words of Faith, 
 So with the myrtle at her shrine, 
 Her bright pure brow we will entwine, 
 
 All free from moil and scath. 
 
 Melpomene. 
 
 47 If the sweet measures of the comic muse, 
 My merry sister, can be sanctified, 
 And thus enlisted in the cause of truth, — 
 If lyre and mask can help its kingdom on 
 Then surely there is labor for the muse 
 Of tragedy, and to the field I come. 
 I've ranged the fields of human wo and crime, 
 Where murder's gory hand has been unbared, 
 Where innocence has been cast down in blood, 
 And guilt has triumphed in its dark intrigues, 
 In beggars' hovels and in courts of kings, 
 In dark assassination's mid-night fray, 
 And on the crest of war where thunders break 
 
 And thousands are laid low all pierced and crushed 
 in blood. 
 
 In all the range of human tragedy, 
 
 Where crime has triumphed over innocence, 
 
 No greater tragedies have ever been 
 
 Than those enacted to cast down sweet Faith. 
 
 See how the tempest breaks upon the head 
 
 Of the Redeemer, how he treads alone 
 
 The wine press, of his people none to help. 
 
 Behold his look of anguish on the cross, 
 
 While scoffs and scorn and mocking jeers salute 
 
 him. 
 See what a solemn darkness veils the sky! 
 See how the earth is shaken 'neath the tread 
 Of the upheaving earthquake, when the dead 
 Forsake their graves and hasten forth to see 
 
134 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 The fearful sight! O hear him cry aloud, 
 As in his pain he feels himself forsaken, 
 E'en by his Father now! Look on that cross! 
 The Son of God is dead! The agony 
 Is o'er! Ye friends of Jesus bear away 
 His body to the grave. Where is there theme 
 For tragedy like this? I find it not, 
 Save in the line of Christ's confessors true. 
 
 Follow their history. A theme for tragic muse. 
 See how the church the victory hath won, 
 In her long, weary, bloody pilgrimage, 
 Since Stephen, the first christian martyr fell 
 All bruised and bleeding at the feet of Saul, 
 And yielded up the ghost! What tragedies, 
 Endured by Faith's confessors! What great fights 
 Of sore affliction! How through seas of blood 
 Her way hath led, and what a trail across 
 The ages she hath made! The blackened stake, 
 The bleaching bones of slaughtered hecatombs! 
 Behold them caged with the wild beasts to die, 
 Flung over dizzy precipices; see 
 Them rot in damp and moldy dungeons dark! 
 Hear their groans when broken on the wheel! 
 See them in long lines dressed to meetly grace 
 Anto de Fes, their bodies doomed to burn! 
 See how they fought for home and altar fires. 
 In Scotia's glens and on brave Holland's dykes, 
 Doing great deeds which through the ages rang. 
 See how at Smithfield they did lighten fires, 
 Which e'en to-day blaze round the whole wide 
 
 world, 
 And will not lose themselves until they merge 
 Into the splendors which burn on the mount 
 
 Of God whose glories flood the great white throne. 
 See Faith now passing through the horrid gloom 
 Of French proscriptions, by the inspiration 
 Of that infernal power which sought the place 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 135 
 
 Of God, in his own temple sitting even 
 As God, blasphemously usurping powers, 
 Which he alone has right to claim o'er men. 
 See the infernal engines used upon 
 The followers of Faith with cruelty 
 That made the devils shudder! See those men 
 In guise of priest and prelate, sit in council 
 And in the name of Jesus instigate 
 Riot and rapine, lust and gory murder! 
 See villages destroyed by fire and sword, 
 The women ravished, tender motherhood 
 Treated with all unutterable indignities 
 While sinking helpless in a bloody death! 
 See helpless infants torn from mothers' arms 
 And dashed against the stones; and blooming 
 
 maidens 
 Given as prey to lustful soldiery! 
 See that whole bloody realm ablaze with war, 
 Whose unutterable atrocities 
 Will send a horror through the shuddering ages! 
 Behold the climax capped with treachery 
 That shames the blackest haunts of lowest hell! 
 The guests invited to a wedding feast, 
 Then butchered helpless in the name of God! 
 A signal for the fiends of lust and blood 
 To do their work in Paris, then throughout 
 The nation drunken with the blood of saints. 
 Such tragedies, as these, endured by Faith, 
 Will furnish themes enough for me and give 
 To all an ample reason why she should be crowned. 
 
 Terpsichore. 
 The psalmist bids us praise the Lord, 
 
 With timbrels and with dances, 
 I come obedient to that word, 
 
 With songs that joy enhances, 
 Not as of old, mid orgies, 
 
136 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 And lust's intoxications, 
 In motions that the sensual please, 
 Borne on midst lewd saltations. 
 
 With harps and choruses we sing, 
 
 Like ancient Israel's daughters, 
 When Miriam made the desert ring, 
 
 Escaped from Red Sea's waters; 
 When cymbals clanged and trumpets brayed, 
 
 And the loud song resounded, 
 When every instrument was played 
 
 To voice a joy unbounded. 
 
 Joy that the hosts had left the land 
 
 Of slavery behind them, 
 And joy that palsied was the hand 
 
 That would in bondage bind them; 
 Joy that the hosts, from out the flood, 
 
 Had there in safety landed, 
 And that their foes, who sought their blood, 
 
 Were now by death disbanded. 
 
 As faith had conquered every foe, 
 
 The victory diffuses 
 A joy that bids the measures flow 
 
 Of all the nine sweet muses. 
 Let anthems roll and paeans sound, 
 
 Our choral songs all aiding, 
 While Faith's fair brow is sweetly bound 
 
 With chaplets, all unfading. 
 
 Erato. 
 49 It long was thought to be my chief concern 
 To weave my floral wreaths for sensual love, 
 Heedless into what paths my feet should rove, 
 Or with what fires forbidden I should burn. 
 But from such base-born mission I now turn. 
 For Faith hath breathed her spirit into me, 
 And to a better nobler work I'm borne, 
 And far diviner things in life I see. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 137 
 
 I see in early love the kindling flames 
 
 Of joys the purest, sweetest, best on earth, 
 And framing into speech the dearest names 
 That ever find in earthly bowers a birth; 
 Of husband, wife, of father, mother dear, 
 The names which noblest men most love and most 
 revere. 
 
 Polyhymnia. 
 
 50 I sing the lofty hymns of praise 
 To Him, through everlasting days, 
 
 Who is forever God; 
 To Him who brought the mountains forth, 
 Whose glory filleth all the earth, 
 
 I sing his mighty nod. 
 
 My soul shall swell the exalted lay, 
 And my enraptured thoughts obey 
 
 The lofty impulse given; 
 To sing His praise who built the skies, 
 Who bade the stars in glory rise, 
 
 To fleck the dome of heaven. 
 
 I see His glory in the sun, 
 Who doth his daily courses run, 
 
 So mighty, through the skies; 
 I see it in the moon's sweet light, 
 Which lights the darkened earth at night, 
 
 As o'er the deep she flies. 
 
 His voice is heard upon the seas, 
 Whose billows rock beneath the breeze, 
 
 Or in the storm uplift; 
 The thunders His great name extol, 
 As on the clouds their chariots roll, 
 
 Where myriad waters drift. 
 
 "His praise in softer notes declare 
 Each whispering breeze of yielding air," 
 That sings its evening song; 
 
138 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 "Let heaven, and earth, and seas, and skies, 
 In one melodious concert rise," 
 To bear His praise along. 
 
 But "man, by nobler passions swayed," 
 Man, who was in His image made, 
 
 May sing a nobler strain; 
 May sing His mighty power to save 
 From sin and death, hell and the grave, 
 
 From sorrow and all pain. 
 
 The soul that soars, with rapture swelling, 
 To talk with thunders in their dwelling, 
 
 To journey yet afar, 
 To where the rolling planets blaze, 
 To bask in the mild, gentle rays 
 
 Of your sweet evening star, — 
 
 That soul to contemplation given, 
 May scale the eternal hills of heaven 
 
 On Faith's adventurous wing; 
 And there around the throne of God, 
 With angels who obey His nod, 
 
 His sounding praises sing. 
 
 O, for those visions that inspire 
 
 And warm our souls with heavenly fire, 
 
 Let Faith to-day be crowned; 
 While with the heavenly choirs above, 
 We celebrate redeeming love, 
 
 And her pure shrine surround. 
 
 Urania. 
 
 51 Sweet Astrea sang a song for me, 
 And bore my soul along; 
 With her grand notes my strains agree, 
 
 Though for my lyre too strong. 
 It was not made to sound the deeps 
 Of vast immensity; 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 139 
 
 My muse a humbler lyric sweeps, 
 
 Where planets deck the sky, 
 Those planets that move 'round the sun 
 
 In arcs of glory there, 
 As they their various courses run, 
 
 The same grand truths declare; 
 " Forever singing as they shine," 
 
 Proclaim what Faith hath shown, 
 " The hand that made us is divine," 
 
 Then let her wear the crown. 
 
 Calliope. 
 
 52 The ancient world called me the sweet voiced 
 muse, 
 And made my task to sing heroic deeds; 
 With stylus and the tablet that I use, 
 
 They represent me waiting for the meeds 
 
 To heroes given, on which ambition feeds, 
 
 That I might write them down for future ages 
 
 In records which each generation reads; 
 Or else rehearse in song, which e'er engages 
 The hearts of men more strongly than the speech 
 of sages. 
 
 And so great deeds have been my themes of song; 
 
 I fired blind Homer's music-flowing tongue 
 To tell the prowess of his heroes strong, 
 
 When for the seige of Troy his harp was strung, 
 
 When Virgil of his arms and hero sung, 
 'Twas I that his heroic verse inspired; 
 
 And when the world on Milton's numbers hung, 
 By me was his majestic genius fired 
 To such grand flights as all inferior spirits tired. 
 
 But weary of the deeds of blood and death, 
 By which ambitious men have sought for fame, 
 
 On acts of violence to spend my breath 
 
 I shall henceforth no more befoul my name. 
 
140 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 The heroes who man's furious passions tame, 
 Are far more worthy of my loftiest verse. 
 
 Themes which the love of virtue doth inflame 
 Shall be my task hereafter to rehearse, — 
 No more to sing of war, which doth the nations curse. 
 
 For war shall be forgotten in the trance 
 
 Of rest that shall o'erspread the weary nations. 
 The fiends of blood shall fall before the advance 
 
 Of Faith in her benign affiliations. 
 
 Whose heroes, in the midst of deprivations 
 Unimaginable, shall subdue the earth; 
 
 And Peace and Love, with grand and sweet 
 cantations, 
 Shall fill the hearts of men with joyful mirth, 
 And sound the name and love of Jesus grandly forth. 
 
 I bring my harp for sweetest music strung; 
 
 My stylus, too, and tablet here I bring; 
 All that I have and am, my hand, my tongue, 
 
 I consecrate to Faith; and I will sing 
 
 My sweetest, grandest measure; I will ring 
 The notes of triumph for the heroes brave, 
 
 Who, in the steps of Jesus following, 
 Laid down their lives a fallen world to save. 
 Give Faith the crown, while they their victor palms 
 shall wave. 
 
 Mars. 
 
 53 I've heard the testimony of these witnesses, 
 And thus compelled, do with their speech agree; 
 As they confirm what I myself have seen. 
 I now come down from my red chariot; 
 My steeds shall now be harnessed to the plow, 
 Made of the swords of war by Faith's fair hand 
 To plow the fields of peace. My shield and crown 
 Shall now be hung upon the temple's walls 
 As trophies of the victories of Faith. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 141 
 
 For my vocation's gone, and men no more 
 Shall learn the art of war; and smiling peace 
 Shall henceforth hold them all in her embrace. 
 Farewell to war's alarums, and the bray 
 Of martial trumpets, rousing to the fight; 
 Farewell great captains in the lists of fame; 
 No more ye call your legions forth to war, 
 Farewell, brave soldiers, ye have dared to die, 
 E'en at the post of duty on the field ; 
 Change now your captains. I release you here; 
 Enter the ranks of Faith, and go ye forth 
 To victories more grand than mine have been. 
 While bloom, instead of blight, and life, instead 
 Of death; and joy, instead of sorrow's tears; 
 And angels' songs, instead of widow's wails 
 And orphan's moans, shall follow in your path, 
 And ye shall win the crown of endless life. 
 Farewell the pomp and circumstance of war; 
 Its heraldry and glamour are revealed 
 In their true light to-day. Most beauteous Faith 
 I thee salute, and lay my helmet here [at her feet\ . 
 Ye powers and virtues here convoked in state 
 Ye will do well to give the crown to Faith. 
 
 Murder^ Pestilence and Famine. 
 
 54 Our time is past, our work is done, 
 To deeds of blood no more we run; 
 Wasting disease now flees away, 
 And Famine loses her dread sway; 
 Down to the shades we sink and fall, 
 No more to answer war's dread call, 
 No more to feed the greedy grave 
 Where fiends and furies fiercely rave. 
 
 Lust and Licentiousness . 
 
 55 Damned to the lowest hell we fly 
 
 Where evil is entombed; 
 
142 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Where low-born passions crowd and die 
 And ne'er shall be exhumed. 
 
 56 Jealousy, Hatred and Detraction 
 We yield beneath the power of love, 
 
 The grandest child of Faith, 
 Her fire descending from above, 
 Now lays us low in death. 
 
 Avarice. 
 
 57 My stony heart is broke at length, 
 
 My iron hand, which with such strength, 
 
 Held to my hoarded gold, 
 Hath lost its grip and I must yield 
 To Faith victorious in this field, 
 
 My treasures must be sold. 
 
 Cast in the treasury of God, 
 They move to her divining rod 
 
 To scatter joys around; 
 To bless the poor, the hungry feed, 
 To minister to the sufferer's need: 
 
 For this let her be crowned. 
 
 False Science. 
 
 58 My reign is o'er and I must leave my throne, 
 Into dark exile go and thus atone 
 
 For my deep guilt, wherein I madly strove 
 To rob Jehovah of his creature's love, 
 And fix their faith and wavering hearts on me 
 Throned in the temple of the deity. 
 My high pretentions I must here resign, 
 And to Coeleste yield as more divine, 
 While she and her fair daughters, Faith's pure 
 temples twine. 
 
 Superstition. 
 
 59 All false religions must go down 
 
 Before the march of Faith, 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 143 
 
 When she receives the victor crown 
 
 I must lie low in death. 
 I must unbind the galling chain, 
 
 By which I've held mankind 
 To clasp their fetters ne'er again, 
 
 For man no more is blind. 
 
 Beneath the sway of Faith and Love, 
 
 And Hope they shall arise. 
 And bask in splendors from above 
 
 That light them to the skies. 
 Farewell, my reign was wide and long, 
 
 My hands with blood were red, 
 Faith hath for me proved all too strong, 
 
 I sink among the dead. 
 
 C celeste. 
 
 60 My daughters all, with heart and soul and voice, 
 Declare for Faith and bid us all rejoice. 
 
 The rocks, the rills and the rejoicing hills, 
 The plains and mountains Faith with rapture fills, 
 The trees and animate creation speak, 
 And not a voice the harmony can break. 
 The stellar worlds catch up the thrilling sound, 
 And send the glorious anthem all around, 
 All, all declare the great Almighty God, 
 All are obedient to his sovereign rod, 
 The weakest and the mightiest obey his nod. 
 
 Herman. 
 
 61 I've heard enough; I cannot doubt again. 
 These witnesses have made the matter plain, 
 It must be so; Faith is the child of Heaven — , 
 And priceless gifts she hath to mortals given, 
 I bow to her and kiss her pure sweet hand; 
 In her heroic ranks I gladly stand, 
 
 Begone Cimmeriam doubt to shades below, 
 I see the Christ and to his cross I'll go. 
 
144 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Ye heavenly ministers in sweet accord, 
 Ye've shown the way that leads me to the Lord. 
 Let Faith with coronet of gold be crowned, 
 And discords all in Hallelujahs drowned. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 62 I have been seeking only after truth, 
 
 I thought to find it in the way I went, 
 But see to-day that from my earliest youth, 
 At shrine of lies my strength has all been spent. 
 My misconceptions I do here relent, 
 False science I mistook for what is true, 
 Of all my sins in dust I here repent, 
 And join with these sweet witnesses and you 
 To give to Faith and her Messiah all their due. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 63 It comes as I expected, grandly moves 
 The work by which we win a fallen world; 
 There is no science but most surely proves 
 That the white banner which is here unfurled, 
 Was lifted up by Christ when death was hurled 
 Down to destruction; that the glorious faith 
 To saints delivered when in conflict whirled, 
 Came down from God, to triumph over death 
 
 And save our dying race from swift destruction's 
 path. 
 
 Time, which doth in unending circles run, 
 Confirms the truth of God to thinking men; 
 When History her records first begun, 
 Prescience directed and controlled her pen, 
 So that she wrote with a far-seeing ken, 
 And proves our God with her unerring hand. 
 And the prophetic spirit doth impregn, 
 The ruins of old states and cities grand, 
 With evidence which must blind unbelief command. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 145 
 
 The muses are all conquered now by Faith, 
 And none will ever sing in wanton mood 
 Of those forbidden joys that end in death; 
 But find their highest sphere to sing of God, 
 And of a Christ in human brotherhood. 
 To celebrate Faith's heroes in their song, 
 To strike their harps to themes all grand and good. 
 For pure religion always to prolong, 
 Their notes of praise, in accents pure, and sweet, and 
 strong. 
 
 Science and art, thus consecrated, make 
 The earth to echo with their grandest tones, 
 And all her plains and hills and mountains shake 
 With rapture while thus filling all her zones. 
 While each o'er the whole earth sweet Faith en- 
 thrones. 
 All false religions grovel in the dust; 
 The Atheist e'en the power of Jesus owns 
 Our Friend Agnostikos has learned to trust 
 And every evil power is into exile thrust. 
 
 O Faith, stand forth, thou hast no rival now, 
 Thy realms encircle all the world around, 
 These powers and virtues now before thee bow, 
 While heaven and earth with joyful songs resound, 
 In notes which do the nether world astound, 
 Come forth, O, Hope and Love, her daughters 
 fair, [crowned. 
 
 By your white hands your mother must be 
 Here is the crown that glorious Faith must wear 
 While in her blessed reign the whole wide world 
 shall share. 
 
 Hope and Love. 
 64 Our mother, let this glorious crown 
 On thy fair temples rest, 
 While at thy shrine the world bows down, 
 And in thy reign is blessed. 
 
146 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 All the good things that we have done, 
 
 To bless and save the race, 
 We have received through thee alone, 
 
 As God's pure gift of grace. 
 
 In this thy crown the world can see 
 
 Hope for the future grand, 
 The hosts led on to victory 
 
 Beneath thy strong command. 
 And blest fruition now it may 
 
 Reap from thy happy reign 
 In bonds of love beneath thy sway, 
 
 All shall be bright again. 
 
 Ernest. 
 
 65 The long awaited day at length has come, 
 By prophets and apostles long foreshown 
 When everywhere on earth Faith finds a home. 
 O blessed ministrant ascend thy throne, 
 
 And take a scepter which is all thine own, 
 Let Hope and Love thy ministering spirits be 
 To waken joy where'er thy name is known. 
 
 lead the ages on to victory: 
 
 And Christ, our Lord, the travel of his soul shall see. 
 
 Herman. 
 
 66 I feel a joy I never knew before, 
 
 A joy for which I did in vain explore 
 
 The world around: I see O Faith, the light 
 
 Which dissipates the darkness of my night 
 
 1 know that man's Redeemer liveth now 
 And at his feet most joyfully I bow. 
 There is a God and immortality 
 
 For those I love, for all mankind, for me. 
 
 Julian. 
 
 6y Hail, glorious Faith, the latest in thy train, 
 I may not e'en the most unfaithful prove. 
 
WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 147 
 
 As all my quest for light hath been in vain, 
 Until I found it in Messiah's love, 
 I'll follow him to lead to joys above. 
 And with the throngs as coming ages crowd 
 The King's highway, I joyfully will move, 
 And when he comes with angels on the cloud, 
 We'll welcome him with hymns and anthems loud. 
 
 All sing of Faith as their Guide. 
 
 68 " 'Tis by the Faith of joys to come 
 
 We walk through deserts dark as night, 
 Till we arrive at Heaven, our home, 
 
 Faith is our guide and Faith 's our light. 
 
 The want of sight she well supplies, 
 She makes the pearly gates appear, 
 
 Far into distant worlds she pries, 
 And brings celestial glories near. 
 
 Cheerful we tread the desert through, 
 While Faith inspires the heavenly ray 
 
 Though lions roar and tempests blow, 
 And rocks and dangers fill the way. " 
 
 She shows to us the world on fire, 
 
 When heaven and earth shall pass away; 
 
 When planets, sun, and moon expire, 
 
 Wrapped in the flames of that dread day. 
 
 But she reveals beyond that storm, 
 New heaven and earth in glory rise, 
 
 A world of light, of matchless form, 
 Reflects the glories of the skies. 
 
 O wear thy crown most glorious queen, 
 And wave the scepter of thy love, 
 
 All o'er the world thy form is seen 
 Leading mankind to realms above. 
 
148 WHO SHALL WEAR THE CROWN? 
 
 Faith. 
 
 6g Ordained of God I now receive, 
 
 The crown you here bestow, 
 To lead the hosts that shall believe, 
 
 While ages come and go. — 
 The ages of that golden day, 
 
 The blest millennium, 
 When all the world shall own my sway, 
 
 Till Christ the Lord shall come. 
 
 It is the glorious harvest time, 
 
 To reap the Master's grain, 
 Which shall be brought from every clime, 
 
 As reaped from hill and plain. 
 The travel of his suffering soul 
 
 Shall thus be satisfied, 
 By gathered hosts as centuries roll, 
 
 Of souls for whom he died. 
 
 And peace shall reign and joy shall dwell 
 
 'Among the sons of men. 
 While hearts with warmest rapture swell, 
 
 As ne'er before hath been. 
 Knowledge shall spread its light abroad, 
 
 And its bright beaming rays, 
 Shall point the nations to our God, 
 
 Who thus his power displays. 
 
 And when that day of days shall come, 
 
 And Jesus shall descend, 
 To gather all his ransomed home, 
 
 My reign on earth shall end. 
 O! then rapture shall be sweet 
 
 As with those hosts we stand, 
 To lay this crown at his dear feet 
 
 And wait his blest command.