THE IMPORTANCE OF THE LIVING PRESENT.
By James Russell Lowell
(From "The Present Crisis," by James Russell Lowell.) Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light. Backward look across the ages, and the beacon moments see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through oblivion's sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding cry
Of those crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own. Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting, in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.