So were we men and women, and should hold
Our rightful rank in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,
Nought lives for self--All, all--from crown to footstool--
The Lamb, before the world's foundations slain--
The angels, ministers to God's elect--
The sun, who only shines to light a world--
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers--
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean-graves
Flee the decay of stagnant self-content--
The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe--
The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower--
The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms,
Born only to be prey for every bird--
All spend themselves for others: and shall man,
Earth's rosy blossom--image of his God--
Whose twofold being is the mystic knot
Which couples earth and heaven--doubly bound
As being both worm and angel, to that service
By which both worms and angels hold their life--
Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt,
Refuse, without some hope of further wage
Which he calls Heaven, to be what God has made him?
No! let him show himself the creature's lord
By freewill gift of that self-sacrifice
Which they perforce by nature's law must suffer.
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