Fifty of the Protestant Ballads :: :: University of Virginia Library

Good King Hezekiah resolved with a will
The mind and the mercies of God to fulfil,
And cut out idolatry's cankerous taint
To its uttermost fibre, though feeble and faint;
So he sought out the Serpent that Moses had made
(Though wrought by God's mandate, he was not afraid)
The Serpent of brass, whereon it sufficed
To look and to live, as the emblem of Christ!
That Serpent, because of old time to his days
The people to It had burnt incense always,
He brake it, and made it through fire to pass,
And call'd it Nehushtan, a mere “bit of brass.”

Ay,—great was the faith of that pious young prince,
Who, though the meek Moses himself so long since
Had set up this brass for remembrance, and given
That type for the Christ, the Messiah from Heaven,—

Yet scrupled not, feared not, to tear it away
When Israel was led by its worship astray
From God to His emblem, from Christ to the cross,
From Truth to Nehushtan, from gold to the dross,—
But smash'd it to pieces—that image, that sin,
Whereto they burnt incense, salvation to win,—
As from the same temple, in spite of its priests,
Were whipped money-changers, their doves, and their beasts.

So now with the crucifix, symbol indeed
Of Christ and His Christians, of cross and its creed;
Though ancient and full of affectionate thought
Where the Antetype shows through the type as it ought;
And so, with the thanksgiving-feast, bread and wine,
A pledge and a token of Presence Divine,—
If any man teach to those creatures to bow
With music and incense and vestment and vow,
To yearn on a brass in the chancel set up,
To worship a paten, and kneel to a cup,
Here, here is Nehushtan, to us of this day,—
But,—where's Hezekiah to tear it away?