Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/36

May furious fool or sneerer
Retard our steps when nearer
And clearer, ever clearer,
We view the Coming Time?

The heavens overarching
With the echo shall be ringing
Of those who travel singing
To the goal of all their searching:
The solid earth thereunder
Shall thrill with joy and wonder
Beneath the steady thunder
Of many nations marching.

Immeasurably vast
We see the multitude
Who stand where none have stood
And tread the plains at last
(Error and Darkness riven),
Of that terrestrial heaven
For which the race has striven
Through all the ages past;

The land foreseen of old,
Where naught is reaped unsown
And human blood and bone
Are neither bought nor sold;
An earth where kings’ oppressions
And prayers and intercessions
To priest-contrived obsessions
Shall be a strange tale told.