The Message by Ella Wheeler Wilcox — Stanza

free-verse72 lines

The Message

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I have not the gift of vision,

I have not the psychic ear,

And the realms that are called Elysian

I neither see nor hear;

Yet oft when the shadows darken

And the daylight hides its face,

The soul of me seems to hearken

For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,

They speak to me not by word;

Yet my soul would be guilty of treason

If it did not say it had heard.

For Space has a message compelling

To give to the ear of Earth;

And the things which the Silence is telling

In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it -

That ever through good or ill,

The will of the Ruling Spirit

Is moving and ruling still.

In the clutch of the blood-red terror

That holds the world in its might,

The Race is learning its error

And will find its way to the light.

And this is the Truth as I see it -

Whoever cries out for peace,

Must think it, and live it, and BE IT,

And the wars of the world will cease.

Men fight that man may awaken,

And no longer want to kill;

Wars rage, and the heavens are shaken

That man may learn how to be still.

In the silence he finds his Saviour -

The God Who is dwelling within;

And only by Christ-behaviour

Is the soul of him saved from sin.

There is only one Source - no other -

One Light, and each soul is a ray;

And he who would slaughter his brother,

HIMSELF he is seeking to slay.

Now these are the Truths we are learning

Through evils and horrors untold;

For the thought of the race is turning

Away from its methods of old.

And the mind of the race is sated,

With the things that it prized of yore,

And the monster of war is hated,

As never on earth before.

Oh, slow are God's mills in the grinding,

But they grind exceedingly small;

And slow is man's soul in the finding,

That he is a part of the All.

Through aeons and aeons, his story

Is bloody and blackened with crime;

But he will come out into glory

And stand on the summits sublime.

He will stand on the summits of Knowledge,

In the splendour of Light from the Source;

And the methods of church and of college

Will all of them change by his force.

For the creeds that are blind and cruel,

And the teachings by rule and by rod,

Will all be turned into fuel

To light up the pathway to God.

This is the Truth as I hear it -

The clouds are rolling away,

And Spirit will talk with Spirit

In the swift approaching day.

War from the world shall be driven,

From evil shall come forth good;

And men shall make ready for Heaven

Through living in Brotherhood.