<h2><SPAN name="page20"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>THE TWO AGES</h2>
<p class="poetry">On great cathedral window I have seen<br/>
A summer sunset swoon and sink away,<br/>
Lost in the splendours of immortal art.<br/>
Angels and saints and all the heavenly hosts,<br/>
With smiles undimmed by half a thousand years,<br/>
From wall and niche have met my lifted gaze.<br/>
Sculpture and carving and illumined page,<br/>
And the fair, lofty dreams of architects,<br/>
That speak of beauty to the centuries—<br/>
All these have fed me with divine repasts.<br/>
Yet in my mouth is left a bitter taste,<br/>
The taste of blood that stained that age of art.</p>
<p class="poetry">Those glorious windows shine upon the black<br/>
And hideous structure of the guillotine;<br/>
Beside the haloed countenance of saints<br/>
There hangs the multiple and knotted lash.<br/>
<SPAN name="page21"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>The Christ
of love, benign and beautiful,<br/>
Looks at the torture-rack, by hate conceived<br/>
And bigotry sustained. The prison cell,<br/>
With blood-stained walls, where starving men went mad,<br/>
Lies under turrets matchless in their grace.</p>
<p class="poetry">God, what an age! How was it that You
let<br/>
Colossal genius and colossal crime<br/>
Walk for a hundred years across the earth,<br/>
Like giant twins? How was it then that men,<br/>
Conceiving such vast beauty for the world,<br/>
And such large hopes of heaven, could entertain<br/>
Such hellish projects for their fellow-men?<br/>
How could the hand that, with consummate skill<br/>
And loving patience, limned the luminous page,<br/>
Drop pen and brush, and seize the branding-rod,<br/>
To scourge a brother for his differing faith?</p>
<p class="poetry">Not great this age in beauty or in art;<br/>
Nothing is wrought to-day that shall endure,<br/>
For earth’s adornment, through long centuries<br/>
Not ours the fervid worship of a God<br/>
That wastes its splendid opulence on glass,<br/>
Leaving but hate, to give it mortal kin.<br/>
Yet great this age: its mighty work is man<br/>
Knowing himself, the universal life.<br/>
<SPAN name="page22"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>And great
our faith, which shows itself in works<br/>
For human freedom and for racial good.<br/>
The true religion lies in being kind.<br/>
No age is greater than its faith is broad.<br/>
Through liberty and love men climb to God.</p>
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