Songs of Religion and Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

O thou, by men the Saviour vaunted,
Beyond all mighty names that were,
Invoked and chanted!
Supreme above all strifes that stir
This troublous zone, as high in Heaven,
Vaulting the dark clouds thunder-riven,
Hangs poised the dome of lucid day
Serenely stable;
If thou, as when our fleshly frame
To thy pure spirit gave place and name,
To save art able,
Me, thy poor brother—for I may call
Thee with what name thou gav'st to all—

From lawless thoughts, and heartless deeds,
And from the strife of harnessed creeds
Save—O my Saviour!

Proud temples to the mighty Saviour
The boastful sons of men have raised
With fair behaviour,
With laboured litanies have praised
A Saviour's name. Even so of old,
Who tricked the prophets' tombs with gold
Thy living prophet's person nailed
With crucifixion;
And we with worship of thy name
Do cheat ourselves of Thee, nor blame
The shallow fiction.
Where love is cold, and loose lust reigns,
And pride ramps insolent in the veins,
Where earthy souls heap earthy dross,
And deedless fear shrinks back from loss,
Art thou the Saviour?

By the green waves of ancient Constance,
Convened in Christ the Saviour's name,
With pomp and instance,
The scarlet-hatted churchmen came.
And kings and kaisers with the cowl
Were leagued that day, by fair or foul
To smite a just man's truthful front
With sore infliction.
Erect up stood that pale-faced man,
And mildly met the purple ban
With contradiction.
Hate, Pride, and Fear, with axe and rod,
And pious phrase, assumed the god;
A solemn sentence then did frame,
And burnt the just man in the name
Of Christ the Saviour.

Even so; and this was then religion!
But look within, false heart, and read
In that home region

What germs of strange delusion breed;
What snake, there lurking 'neath the flower,
Waits but the tempter's suasive hour,
When he in some new guise shall show
The dear temptation:
O! then, whom men the Saviour call,
From stumbling save and sudden fall,
And sheer prostration!
From loveless will and untamed thought,
From vain desire and fancies naught,
From the deaf ear that hears no call,
From pride that pioneers a fall,
Be thou my Saviour!