St. Michael the Weigher

 

Stood the tall Archangel weighing

All man's dreaming, doing, saying,

All the failure and the pain,

All the triumph and the gain,

In the unimagined years,

Full of hopes, more full of tears,

Since old Adam's hopeless eyes

Backward searched for Paradise,

And, instead, the flame-blade saw

Of inexorable Law.

Waking, I beheld him there,

With his fire-gold, flickering hair,

In his blinding armor stand,

And the scales were in his hand:

Mighty were they, and full well

They could poise both heaven and Hell.

'Angel,' asked I humbly then,

'Weighest thou the souls of men?

That thine office is, I know.'

'Nay,' he answered me, 'not so;

But I weigh the hope of Man

Since the power of choice began,

In the world, of good or ill.'

Then I waited and was still.

In one scale I saw him place

All the glories of our race,

Cups that lit Belsbazzar's feast,

Gems, the lightning of the East,

Kublai's sceptre, Caesar's sword,

Many a poet's golden word,

Many a skill of science, vain

To make men as gods again.

In the other scale he threw

Things regardless, outcast, few,

Martyr-ash, arena sand,

Of St. Francis' cord a strand,

Beechen cups of men whose need

Fasted that the poor might feed,

Disillusions and despairs

Of young saints with, grief-grayed hairs,

Broken hearts that brake for Man.

Marvel through my pulses ran

Seeing then the beam divine

Swiftly on this hand decline,

While Earth's splendor and renown

Mounted light as thistle-down.

James Russell Lowell

BIO: James Russell Lowell (1819 - 1891) was an American poet and member of the Fireside Poets, whose poetry became as popular and highly-regarded as the well-known British poets of his day. Lowell became an abolitionist, often expressing his political views through his poetry, and was hired to be the editor of an abolitionist newspaper. In 1854, he was appointed Professor of Languages at Harvard University. In 1857, he took the job of editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Twenty years later, he was appointed ambassador to Spain. Later on, he became ambassador to the Court of St. James. Lowell was part of the Romantic Movement in poetry and an expert in linguistics. He served as an inspiration to writers such as Mark Twain and H.L. Mecken because of his love of dialects. Some of his abolitionist poetry was used in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He died at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1891.