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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  On a Portrait of Servetus

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

On a Portrait of Servetus

By Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909)

THOU grim and haggard wanderer who dost look

With haunting eyes forth from the narrow page,—

I know what fires consumed with inward rage

Thy broken frame, what tempests chilled and shook!

Ah, could not thy remorseless foeman brook

Time’s sure devourment, but must needs assuage

His anger in thy blood, and blot the age

With that dark crime which virtue’s semblance took!

Servetus! that which slew thee lives to-day,

Though in new forms it taints our modern air;

Still in heaven’s name the deeds of hell are done:

Still on the high-road, ’neath the noon-day sun,

The fires of hate are lit for them who dare

Follow their Lord along the untrodden way.