Except the Christ be born again tonight In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame, The world will never see his kingdom bright.

Lindsay frames the coming of “the kingdom” not as a merely historical event or institutional achievement, but as a recurring inward birth—an imaginative and moral reawakening that must happen “tonight,” urgently, within human consciousness. By insisting Christ be “born again…in dreams of all men,” he shifts emphasis from doctrine to lived transformation: the sacred must be re-enacted in the minds of everyone, including “saints and sons of shame,” if society is to be redeemed. The line suggests that spiritual renewal is collective and inclusive; without it, the hoped-for radiant order (“his kingdom bright”) remains unrealized. The poem’s rhetoric blends Christian imagery with Lindsay’s characteristic populist, visionary appeal.