One night I dreamt I saw a man
Standing before God's shining throne,
A very angry little man,
And God and he were all alone
God's knee seemed like a mountain wall,
Up which the man, fly-like, might crawl.
But there he stood and shook his fists
And cursed the Universal plan.
I saw his impotent small wrists,
His eyes too furious for fear;
He did not bow his head nor kneel;
He shouted loud that God might hear.
God might have crushed him with His heel,
Instead He bent a listening ear.

Then he began
That speck of dust, that fly-like man,
To tell his grievances to God
Who never moved by stir nor nod.
Just so an insect might have raved
Defiance at Mount Everest,
Snow-peaked, cloud-turbaned at the crest.
He said that he had never craved
Mercy of God, but just a sign
That there was method and design,
A scheme benign,
Hidden within this tangled skein
Of futile effort, useless pain;
Of good endeavour turned to ill,
Of evil crowned and potent still.

He asked what master would employ
A man who made so poor a toy,
And what mechanic but would not
Have seen the flaws and scrapped the lot.
And yet with sob and shriek and curse
The world rolls on from bad to worse.
Was this divine — to make from dust
A creature torn by every lust,
But fretted by the sight of stars
Shining beyond his prison bars;
Swine, racked by dreams of holy things,
Apes with the rudiments of wings?
Was God, he clamoured, still content
And heedless of the innocent
Whose blood and tears fall day by day
On every tyrant's rose-strewn way
While God looks down — Omnipotent?

He laughed at his own irony,
That little man! I held my breath.
I knew some instant flaming death
Must end his panting blasphemy.
But this I saw — God stretched His hand
Down to the man that he might stand
Upon the palm. Poised there in space
He met his Maker face to face
And heard God's whisper without fear.
I could not hear
The words that passed, but Heaven's grace
Clothed that small man. God took his part
Because his angry rebel's heart
Had yearned for justice, sought for good,
And turned in wrath from compromise;
When man condemned, God understood
A soul who seeks a Paradise
Where every wrong shall be redressed;
And better that all good — the best
To him whose just soul had defied
An unjust God — God justified.