The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

Is there Bridge-maker who can throw
An arch across the gulf of years,
That we may travel back, and know
The brooding thoughts, and haunting fears,
And clinging faiths of them who raised
Their altars 'neath the evening star,
And offered to the gods, and priased,
And drave the dogs and birds afar?

Vainly, I seek to know his mind
Who smote the lamb with gleaming knife,
And sprinkled blood, and hoped to find
The peace of a diviner life.
Far off he seems, I cannot tell
Whether beneath me, or above,
Or compassed round with shades of hell,
Or trembling in the bliss of love!

I gaze back from the brink of time
On shadowy forms of early days,
That in the morning, loom sublime,
God-guided on untravelled ways;

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But o'er the vague, vast chasm that parts
Their thought from mine I cannot go;
I wot not how their troubled hearts
Were calmed by making blood to flow.

Yet once wherever man had trod,
Or sin had grown from base desire,
He built an altar to his god,
And laid the faggot on the fire,
And brought the choicest of the flock
From frolic by its bleating dam,
And laid upon the unhewn rock
The tender kid, or spotless lamb.

The knife into its throat was driven,
The blood was sprinkled on the stone,
The smell of fat went up to heaven,
That on the leaping flame was thrown;
And he before his god was glad,
And prayed, and sang his evening hymn,
And laid him down to sleep, and had
Bright dreams until the stars grew dim.

Thus did the Hebrew on the plain
Of Moreh, while Heaven, many-eyed,
Unweeping, saw the throbbing pain,
Or smiled even as the victim died,
And smelled a sweeter smell from blood,
He wist, than from the myriad flowers
That breathed, from shining bell and bud,
Their incense through the dewy hours.

The subtle-witted Greek with art
Was fain the anguish to adorn,
And singing with a sprightly heart,
Led the young kid with sprouting horn,
Flower-garlanded, into the grove,
And there by crystal fount or brook,
Into the life of Nature wove
The slender thread of life he took.

The Norseman slew the mighty steed
That bore him in the battle fray,
And ate the flesh, and drank the mead,
And feasted Hella-thoughts away,
And piled the logs upon the hearth,
And called the gods, in stormy words,
To send the hungry ravens forth
To fatten at the feast of swords.

Yet darker rites were theirs who kissed
Their hand unto the placid moon;
Or who the Tyrian Moloch wist
To pacify with choicest boon
Of babe or maid; or where the Priest
Stood grim beneath the Druid oak;
Or Aztec fed with ample feast
The captives for the fateful rock.

What was it entered thus the soul,
To give it calm, or promise bliss?
Strange that the ages, as they roll,
Have dropped behind a thought like this,
Which held the universal mind
Of all the world when it was young!
For now the key I cannot find
In all that men have said or sung.

In mocking scorn, the Prophet laughed
Loud at a hungering, thirsting God
Who craved the flesh of bulls, or quaffed
The reeking blood that died the sod,
For every beast is His, and all
The cattle with their clover-breath,
And Love, that quickened great and small,
Can feel no pleasure in their death.

They say the Giver of all life
Is fain to take the life He gives,
And will not spare, unless the knife
May gash some other thing that lives;
And they are sure, and they are clear,
While I in dizzying darkness grope,
But trust that God will yet appear
In star-gleams of a nobler hope.

I would not heed, though that old Faith
Had spread its roots o'er all the earth,
If they were withered now in death
As having no abiding worth:

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But from those roots still branches spring
That shape our thoughts of truth and right,
And still of Sacrifice we sing,
And blood that maketh clean and white.

There was some passion, fear, or guilt
That emphasised expression thus,
As by a mighty oath, and felt
A peace it cannot give to us.
But what? Was it the soul's consent
To die for sin that it had done?
Nay; man's strong life was not yet spent
On threads by morbid conscience spun.

I know the anguish that is wrought
Into the web of highest bliss;
I know the Cross must be his lot
Who thrills with Love's redeeming kiss.
But when the Lamb or Bullock fell
'Neath the keen blade, or shattering blow,
How that could make the sick heart well,
Or nearer God—I do not know.

And yet the Lamb of God was slain
Or ere the age of sin began,
And wrapt in that prophetic pain
Is all the history of man;
And all the fulness of his life,
And all the greatness of his thought,
And all the peace of his long strife
Root in that Everlasting Ought.