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I
PRIEST of God, unto thee I come; | |
| Day doth dawn, though the mist lies deep. | |
| Trembling with dread from my home I fled; | |
| I have slain a man in the land of sleep. | |
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| Him I met in a region dim, | 5 |
| Where ever the sun shines faint and low, | |
| Where the moon is far as a tiny star, | |
| And rivers speed with a noiseless flow. | |
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| In the tangled wood he was lying hid; | |
| But I saw him lurking, and then I knew | 10 |
| ’T was the soul of the one since time begun | |
| That had made me false when I would be true. | |
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| My heart was hot and my anger fierce; | |
| I knew in my dreaming his life I sought. | |
| But with all my power, as I saw him cower, | 15 |
| I willed the deed that my hands have wrought. | |
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| Ask me not if his name I know, | |
| For all the rest of my dream is hid; | |
| I only remember the river’s flow, | |
| And the dim gray light and the deed I did. | 20 |
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| But demons of death and hate that wait | |
| For the soul that sins, my soul pursue, | |
| And my hands are red with the blood of the dead, | |
| And ever they cry the long hours through: | |
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| “Murderer, though in dreams and sleep, | 25 |
| Done is the deed with thy soul’s consent, | |
| And there is no hope for Heaven’s gate to ope, | |
| Nor will men have pity nor God relent.” | |
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II
Son, no sin on thy soul doth rest; | |
| Blood shows not on thy trembling hands. | 30 |
| Unto thee can cling no awful thing; | |
| Thy soul was roaming in unreal lands. | |
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| ’T was but a dream when all things seem | |
| Mingled with fantasy strange and wild, | |
| And the soul of man, do the worst it can, | 35 |
| Is sinless in slumber and undefiled. | |
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| For life is the life of the waking day; | |
| Time enough in it for crime and sin. | |
| But we sleep in the hours, like the sinless flowers | |
| That heed not the world and its maddening din. | 40 |
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III
Out from the living, O God, I creep, | |
| Naked and chill, to thy silent land; | |
| Friend have I none, I stand alone, | |
| To wait my doom at thy mighty hand. | |
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| Naked and chill, though wrapped in sin, | 45 |
| In the dark and cold with only thee, | |
| Nor glint of a star that ’s faint and far, | |
| To light the night of thy world for me. | |
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| Whither, O God, wilt thou send the soul | |
| Thou hast planted on earth and plucked away? | 50 |
| For it grew, with the weeds of its evil deeds, | |
| In the wood and fen, in the mire and clay. | |
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IV
Child of the earth, thou fragile flower | |
| Bending down to the wind that blew, | |
| Life shall seem but an evil dream; | 55 |
| Wake to the life that is real and true. | |
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| Cease thy dreaming, the world forget; | |
| Lulled be the pain I made thee bear. | |
| Sin and shame are only the name | |
| Of the lesson I taught thee in sorrow there. | 60 |
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| Thou hast learned how the soul of man | |
| Lifts, through error, its heart on high, | |
| Up from the sin I placed it in, | |
| To the bright, clear light in the starry sky. | |
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| Ages hence, when thy world and stars | 65 |
| Fade away in the mist they are, | |
| Thou shalt weep, and in pity creep | |
| Back to the life of some lonely star. | |
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| Love shall well in thy heart, and tears | |
| Fall for the sorrows thou couldst not know | 70 |
| But for the years of sins and fears | |
| Spent in the dream of thy life below. | |
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