“The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”
Oh, Christ! thou very Christ! not as a God,
One and eternal, treading with thy feet
The rounded worlds, which, with a ruby glow,
Give back the touch in music breathing roll,
Till all the azure dome bows to the light,
Flushed with exultant joy, and sings aloud
To harps of sapphire, amethyst and pearl.
Not as the leader of embannered hosts
That wait thy bidding; the glowing seraph,
Bright cherub, or the archangelic throng,
Grave in the virtue of eternal years—
Fair in the beauty of eternal truth—
Sublime and joyful in eternal youth—
Not all thy goings forth with level eyes,
And even tread, harmonious, self-involved—
Thyself Love, Beauty, Truth, and seeing these
In all, through all, from angel’s anthem tone
To feeblest pulsing in poor human heart:—
Not all thy earth-love mission, thy deep prayers
On Olivet, and all thy weary grief
Until Gethsemane beheld thee bleed
At every pore, o’er faith betrayed, and love
That wearied, though its watch was but an hour—
Thy breaking bread to hungry lips—thine eye
That pitied every shape of wo—thy tears
For Lazarus—thy more than love for her,
The loving Mary, unrebuked, though frail—
Thy scornings of hypocrisy and wrong—
Thy goings up and down for good to earth,
And writing on its forehead a new name,[2]
Even as incarnate Evil walked the earth,
And branded on its face the mark of Cain,[3]
So did thy loving hand efface the mark,
Thy footsteps leave a blessing for the curse—
For this I bless thee, and all this would take
Into my soul of souls, and walk with Thee;
Yet not for these do I so much adore;
. . . . . . . But thou didst go.
Down to the very grave—like unto ours
Thy death-pang—thy effulgent limbs did lie
“In cold obstruction.” Oh! pitying soul of Man!
For this I praise thee—worship and bow down,
Sing with the evening stars and morning light.
When the great glory of the sun walks forth,
I shout the resurrection and new life;
For thou with light didst penetrate the dark,
Thy footsteps waked “old chaos and dim night.”
Legions of melancholy shapes that wailed
Their being, mourning they should be a blot
Upon the garments of enrobed light,
Their voice a discord when the swelling hymn
In God’s majestic dome rolled through all space,
In silence saw thy foot the barrier press
Of their uncheered vault, with a strong tread,
Itself a light, till downward more and more
The inverted arch recoiled, and thou didst stand,
Amid their ghostly and distorted shapes
Serene and fair, thrice beautiful and calm.
Death and Hell—Darkness and Pain! Oh, my God!
We see their marks, we know not what they are,
But Thou, oh Christ! didst walk the dread abysm,
And from thyself a permeating light
Made darkness day. The adamantine bond
Broke from its clasp, and knew itself no more;
The jangling chord, that its own discord wailed,
Slid into music with a heavenly song,
Chaotic shapes, that slunk from light, behold
Thy beauty and upsprung to perfect grace;
The shadow was no more a shadow left—
Deformity no more could find a place—
Evil had turned itself unto the Good,
For Light and Love had breathed themselves again
Upon our earth, unto the very depths
Where Death and Darkness reigned; and God had said,
As when Creation woke, “Let there be light”—
Oh Christ! dear Christ! for this I worship Thee.
Thou didst tread through all man’s fearful pathway,
And we go down unto the grave in trust,
For we behold thy footstep there, a light,
And catch the trailing of thy robe, as on
We go in our dim way through death to Thee;
And not without a hope, thus shadowed forth,
That in God’s universe shall cease to be
The Blackness and the Sorrow and the Wrong!
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[2] “Jesus stooped down and wrote upon the ground.”
[3] “And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘Whence comest thou?’ Then Satan
answered the Lord and said, ‘from going to and fro in the earth, and
from walking up and down in it.’”
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[Illustration: A bouquet of pink roses, also containing small yellow and
blue flowers with a bird perched on the topmost rose.]
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