James Church Alvord

IN garments dyed with blood, thorn-crowned, alone,

A wistful figure on the battlefield

Is by frore moonlight through the dusk revealed.

The mutterings of crass voices ’round him groan.

“Hearing he has not heard;

A god, he has not stirred

To stay this shamefulness of war,” men say.

Spear-pierced by scorn he passes on his way.

Dark is earth’s skyline, scarlet-dark; and he

Is pale as wind-blown ashes. His scarred face

Droops to the slain boys in that slaughter-place;

His wounded hands touch all wounds tenderly.

Yet when he lifts his eyes

The love-light in them dies;

For fury he has fury and for those

Who show no mercy he no mercy knows.

He tramples out the wine-press of his wrath;

He puts the mighty down from their high seat;

Time-rotted tyrannies topple at his feet;

Gaunt discrowned spectres flit before his path.

Their doom was in his word

When first Judea heard

Of brotherhood. Kings scuttle at his nod,

Blown down black battles by the breath of God.

The night brims up with hate and misery;

As from the ground, at each thin blart of fire,

Gleam dead phosphoric eyes in deathless ire.

The hosts snatch freedom from their butchery.

Dead—no lords they fear.

Dead—their blue lips jeer.

Their cross, and his, drives on the smash of things.

The Carpenter builds scaffolds for the Kings.