He who saw in children's eyes
Eternal paradise;

Who made the poor man's lowly
Labor a service holy,

And sweat of work more sweet

Than incense at God's feet;

Who turned the God of Fear
To a father, bending near;

Who looked through shame and sin
At the sanctity within;

Whose memory, since he died,
The earth hath sanctified

Hath been the stay and the hold
Of millions of lives untold,

And the world on its upward path
Hath led from crime and wrath; -
You say that this Christ hath past
And we cannot hold him fast?

II

Ah, no! If the Christ you mean

Shall pass from this time, this scene,

These hearts, these lives of ours,

'Tis but as the summer flowers

Pass, but return again,

To gladden a world of men.

For he,

the only, the true,

In each age, in each waiting heart,
Leaps into life anew;

Tho' he pass, he shall not depart.

Behold him now where he comes!
Not the Christ of our subtile creeds,

But the lord of our hearts, of our homes,

THE PASSING OF CHRIST

Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs;
The brother of want and blame,

The lover of women and men,
With a love that puts to shame
All passions of mortal ken;-
Yet of all of woman born
His is the scorn of scorn;
Before whose face do fly
Lies, and the love of a lie;
Who from the temple of God
And the sacred place of laws
Drives forth, with smiting rod,
The herds of ravening maws.

'Tis he, as none other can,
Makes free the spirit of man,
And speaks, in darkest night,
One word of awful light

That strikes through the dreadful pain

Of life, a reason sane

That word divine which brought

The universe from naught.

Ah, no, thou life of the heart,

Never shalt thou depart!

Not till the leaven of God
Shall lighten each human clod;

Not till the world shall climb

To thy hight serene, sublime,

Shall the Christ who enters our door

Pass to return no more.

179

CREDO

How easily my neighbor chants his creed,
Kneeling beside me in the House of God.
His "I believe" he chants, and "I believe,"
With cheerful iteration and consent

Watching meantime the white, slow sunbeam move
Across the aisle, or listening to the bird

Whose free, wild song sounds through the open door.

Thou God supreme – I too, I too, believe!
But O, forgive, if this one human word,

Binding the deep and breathless thought of Thee
And my own conscience with an iron band,
Stick in my throat. I cannot say it, thus -
This "I believe" that doth Thyself obscure;
This rod to smite; this barrier; this blot
On Thy most unimaginable face
And soul of majesty.

'Tis not man's faith

In Thee that he proclaims in echoed phrase,

But faith in man; faith not in Thine own Christ,
But in another man's dim thought of him.

Christ of Judea, look thou in my heart!
Do I not love thee, look to thee, in thee
Alone have faith of all the sons of men
Faith deepening with the weight and woe of years.

Pure soul and tenderest of all that came
Into this world of sorrow, hear my prayer:

Lead me, yea, lead me deeper into life,
This suffering, human life wherein thou liv'st

NON SINE DOLORE

181

And breathest still, and hold'st thy way divine.
'Tis here, O pitying Christ, where thee I seek,
Here where the strife is fiercest; where the sun
Beats down upon the highway thronged with men,
And in the raging mart. O! deeper lead
My soul into the living world of souls
Where thou dost move.

But lead me, Man Divine,

Where'er thou will'st, only that I may find
At the long journey's end thy image there,
And grow more like to it. For art not thou
The human shadow of the infinite Love
That made and fills the endless universe!
The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown
Eternal Good that rules the summer flower
And all the worlds that people starry space!

NON SINE DOLORE

WHAT, then, is Life

I

what Death?

Thus the Answerer saith;

O faithless mortal, bend thy head and listen:

'Down o'er the vibrant strings,

That thrill, and moan, and mourn, and glisten,
The Master draws his bow.

A voiceless pause; then upward, see, it springs,
Free as a bird with disimprisoned wings!
In twain the chord was cloven,

While, shaken with woe,

With breaks of instant joy all interwoven,
Piercing the heart with lyric knife,

On, on the ceaseless music sings,

Restless, intense, serene;

Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;
Death but the pause between.

II

Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss

That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death

Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!

If, having soared pure spirit at the last,

Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh,
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh-

Ah! who would care to die

From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky;

These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?

Again the Answerer saith:

O ye of little faith,

III

Shall, then, the spirit prove craven,

And Death's divine deliverance but give

A summer rest and haven?

By all most noble in us, by the light that streams

Into our waking dreams,

Ah, we who know what Life is, let us live!

Clearer and freer, who shall doubt?

Something of dust and darkness cast forever out;