| |
| SAID Christ our Lord, “I will go and see | |
| How the men, my brethren, believe in me.” | |
| He passed not again through the gate of birth, | |
| But made himself known to the children of earth. | |
| |
| Then said the chief priests, and rulers, and kings, | 5 |
| “Behold, now, the Giver of all good things; | |
| Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state | |
| Him who alone is mighty and great.” | |
| |
| With carpets of gold the ground they spread | |
| Wherever the Son of Man should tread, | 10 |
| And in palace chambers lofty and rare | |
| They lodged him, and served him with kingly fare. | |
| |
| Great organs surged through arches dim | |
| Their jubilant floods in praise of him; | |
| And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, | 15 |
| He saw his image high over all. | |
| |
| But still, wherever his steps they led, | |
| The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, | |
| And from under the heavy foundation-stones | |
| The son of Mary heard bitter groans. | 20 |
| |
| And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall, | |
| He marked great fissures that rent the wall, | |
| And opened wider and yet more wide | |
| As the living foundation heaved and sighed. | |
| |
| “Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, | 25 |
| On the bodies and souls of living men? | |
| And think ye that building shall endure, | |
| Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor? | |
| |
| “With gates of silver and bars of gold | |
| Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father’s fold; | 30 |
| I have heard the dropping of their tears | |
| In heaven these eighteen hundred years.” | |
| |
| “O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, | |
| We build but as our fathers built; | |
| Behold thine images, how they stand, | 35 |
| Sovereign and sole, through all our land. | |
| |
| “Our task is hard,—with sword and flame | |
| To hold thine earth forever the same, | |
| And with sharp crooks of steel to keep | |
| Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep.” | 40 |
| |
| Then Christ sought out an artisan, | |
| A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, | |
| And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin | |
| Pushed from her faintly want and sin. | |
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| These set he in the midst of them, | 45 |
| And as they drew back their garment-hem, | |
| For fear of defilement, “Lo, here,” said he, | |
| “The images ye have made of me!” | |
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