Ada Bartrick Baker (1854– )

HIGH o’er this dim and wandering world

Of shifting dreams and doubts and sighs,

An angel leans, with burning eyes

And wings like flames of fire up-curl’d.

It is his heart that feeds the flame

Whereby those mystic lamps, the seven,

Light up the golden courts of heaven;

Truth is his voice and Love his name.

Beyond this troubled twilight, born

Of half-held creeds that clash and jar,

He glows, a bright unfalt’ring star,

The herald of the coming morn.

He waits that hour, desired of God,

When the clear beams within his eyes

Shall burn to dust each house of lies

Where fetter’d feet so long have trod:

Where childhood’s love and woman’s trust

Rise up like curses, night and day,

To call down vengeance on the clay

That treads its fellow-clay to dust:

Where priestcraft, with its scorpion-rod,

Smites fear into the trembling breast

That else had dared to lie at rest

On the great loving Heart of God:

Where strange bewildered gropers seek,

Through mists of vain and wordy strife.

To enter at the gates of life

And hear the Voice Eternal speak.

And HE SHALL speak—at whose decree

From formless darkness light had birth,

And all the beauty of the earth,

And all the glory of the sea.

“Arise and shine!” His Voice shall say.

Then shall the Morning Star arise

And scatter far the night of lies,

And love and truth bring forth the day.