| |
| IF in the vast material world | |
| No atom ever perished,—though | |
| In multitudinous changes hurl’d | |
| Upwards and downwards, to and fro, | |
| And all that in the present orb’d | 5 |
| From silent growth and sudden storms, | |
| Is but a former past absorb’d | |
| In ever-shifting frames and forms,— | |
| |
| If He who made the worlds that were | |
| And makes the worlds that are to be, | 10 |
| Has with all-wise, all-potent care | |
| Preserved the smallest entity | |
| Imperishable—though it pass | |
| From shape to shape, by heat or cold | |
| Dispersed, attracted, monad mass— | 15 |
| A wind-blown sand, a solid mould,— | |
| |
| Shall He not save those noble things, | |
| Those elements of mind and thought, | |
| Whose marvellous imaginings | |
| Have the great deeds of progress wrought? | 20 |
| Those instincts, be they what they may, | |
| Of which the soul of man is made, | |
| By which he works his wondrous way | |
| Up to light’s very fountain head? | |
| |
| From earth’s untold materials, man | 25 |
| Can build, unbuild, can break or bind; | |
| But from mind’s elements who can | |
| Transform, create another mind? | |
| Who rear new piles of thought from aught | |
| Of thought surviving its decay— | 30 |
| Who ever from the grave has brought | |
| A spirit that had passed away? | |
| |
| If God have left no blank,—no void | |
| Unfilled,—if in Creation’s reign | |
| Nothing is born to be destroyed | 35 |
| Or perish—but to live again;— | |
| If in the cycles of the earth | |
| No atom of that earth can die— | |
| The soul, which is of nobler birth, | |
| Must live,—and live eternally. | 40 |
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