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St. Michael the Weigher

~Siniphous

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

Walking I beheld him there
With his fire-gold, flickering hair
In his blinding armor stand
And the scales were in his hand
Mighty they were, and full well
They could poise both heaven and hell

“Angel,” I asked 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 their race
Cups that lit Belshazzar’s feast
Gems, the lightning of the east
Kublai’s scepter, 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 break for man
Marvel through my pulses ran
Seeing then the beam divine
Swiftly on his hand decline
While Earth’s splendor and renown
Mounted light as thistledown