ONCE th’ omnipotent Maker of world without end | |
| Bade the hosts of His angels in council attend; | |
| And thus in His wisdom supernal He spake: | |
| “In the confines of earth in our image we’ll make | |
| Man, whose spirit divine shall from Heav’n proclaim him, | 5 |
| Yet as human we Adam, the earth-born, will name him.” | |
| Then the band of bright beings, in potent dissent, | |
| Into two hostile factions asunder were rent. | |
| |
| “Create him, I pray,” cried the Angel of Love, | |
| “He will strive to resemble Thy nature above; | 10 |
| I behold his employment—his labours how blest, | |
| He ’mid hunger and sickness will aid the distressed; | |
| With a tear in his eye, and compassion at heart, | |
| He will freely sweet solace where need is impart. | |
| Create man, I pray,” cried the Angel of Love, | 15 |
| “He will strive to resemble Thy spirit above.” | |
| |
| But the Angel of Faithfulness thereupon rose, | |
| The creation of man might and main to oppose; | |
| “He will break the most sacred of compacts, I weet, | |
| And the words that he utters be fraught with deceit; | 20 |
| Nought but falsehood will issue from man’s teeming brain, | |
| Whilst hypocrisy ever forms part of his train.” | |
| Quoth the Angel of Faithfulness; “God, in Thy plan | |
| Of creation include not a being like man.” | |
| |
| Then the Angel of Justice cried: “Heaven! create him, | 25 |
| Love of Law and promotion of concord await him; | |
| I behold him fence in the possession of right, | |
| And all barbarous violence putting to flight; | |
| With firmly fixed laws states and cities he’ll bind, | |
| Whilst with order cementing the bonds of mankind. | 30 |
| Let man be created, then,” Justice implored, | |
| “By whom harmony jarred shall at last be restored.” | |
| |
| “O do not make man!” cried the Angel of Peace, | |
| “For ere long, ’neath his sway law and order shall cease; | |
| States and cities laid waste will attest where he’s been, | 35 |
| With his sword steeped in blood of his brother, I ween: | |
| Dread war and destruction will follow his path, | |
| And the world be o’erspread with dire carnage and wrath. | |
| Great spirit of Life! engender him not, | |
| Who from records of earth law and order will blot.” | 40 |
| |
| Thus in hopeless divergence, in Heaven’s bright bowers, | |
| The spirits angelic were spending their powers, | |
| Till the Angel of Truth, in God’s glory effulgent, | |
| Thus was summoned to plead in a tone more indulgent. | |
| “Truth! lead by thy light to the bliss of salvation, | 45 |
| Free from errors and prejudice man’s aberration, | |
| That each neighbour beside him a brother may seem, | |
| God above him the Father of all he shall deem, | |
| Tho’ for thousands of years his pure mind be o’ercast, | |
| With thine aid it shall shine all unclouded at last, | 50 |
| Truth shall still of the claims of strict justice remind him, | |
| Till persistently seeking blest peace she shall find him, | |
| Then Truth, Justice, and Peace shall, in process of time, | |
| Loud proclaim upon earth Heaven’s kingdom sublime.” | |
| |
| So man was created—though earth clogged his soul— | 55 |
| May have wandered full oft from its heavenly goal— | |
| To make known the One Father, who wills that mankind | |
| Be by Faith and by Truth, Peace and Justice combined, | |
| Until God shall be King on that glorious day, | |
| And His sovereign Law all His creatures obey. | 60 |
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