| |
| EIGHTEEN hundred years agone | |
| Was that deed of darkness done, | |
| Was that sacred thorn-crowned head | |
| To a shameful death betrayed, | |
| And Iscariot’s traitor name | 5 |
| Blazoned in eternal shame. | |
| Thou, disciple of our time, | |
| Follower of the faith sublime, | |
| Who with high and holy scorn | |
| Of that traitorous deed dost burn, | 10 |
| Though the years may nevermore | |
| To our earth that form restore, | |
| The Christ-spirit ever lives, | |
| Ever in thy heart he strives. | |
| When pale misery mutely calls, | 15 |
| When thy brother tempted falls. | |
| When thy gentle words may chain | |
| Hate and anger and disdain, | |
| Or thy loving smile impart | |
| Courage to some sinking heart: | 20 |
| When within thy troubled breast | |
| Good and evil thoughts contest, | |
| Though unconscious thou mayst be, | |
| The Christ-spirit strives with thee. | |
| |
| When he trod the Holy Land | 25 |
| With his small disciple band, | |
| And the fated hour had come | |
| For that august martyrdom, | |
| When the man, the human love, | |
| And the God within him strove, | 30 |
| As in Gethsemane he wept, | |
| They, the faithless watchers, slept: | |
| While for them he wept and prayed, | |
| One denied and one betrayed! | |
| |
| If to-day thou turn’st aside, | 35 |
| In thy luxury and pride, | |
| Wrapped within thyself, and blind | |
| To the sorrows of thy kind, | |
| Thou a faithless watch dost keep, | |
| Thou art one of those who sleep: | 40 |
| Or, if waking, thou dost see | |
| Nothing of divinity | |
| In our fallen struggling race, | |
| If in them thou see’st no trace | |
| Of a glory dimmed, not gone, | 45 |
| Of a future to be won, | |
| Of a future, hopeful, high, | |
| Thou, like Peter, dost deny: | |
| But, if seeing, thou believest, | |
| If the Evangel thou receivest, | 50 |
| Yet, if thou art bound to sin, | |
| False to the ideal within, | |
| Slave of ease, or slave of gold, | |
| Thou the Son of God hast sold. | |
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