University of Virginia Library

THE PHANTOM CROSS.

For years I bare the burden of a cross,
With toiling footsteps up a barren hill,
Unto a dim and distant gate of glory
Framed in a heaven of clouds, and only seen
At sunrise by the watcher dutiful
Who wakes the morning with the breath of prayer.
And there was none to help me. Patiently
I climbed those steps of stone, till each a palace
Of praise became, as I poured out my heart
In sacrifice of ceaseless thanksgiving,
For the great blessing of unanswered hopes
And saving sorrow by the ministries
Of calculated suffering, and the crown
With thorns that blossomed while they pierced my brow
And burst in fragrance flooding all the ways
With sweetness like a song. I saw the crimson
Dear petals falling round in drops of blood.
Nor did I murmur at the bitter road,
The jagged cragged turns of gaunt surprise
That fronted me and frowned at every pause,
And reached forth rocky arms to thrust me down
Deep and yet deeper in unplumbed abysses
And hungered for me, body and soul. I went
Still steadfast on, and still the burden grew
More heavy and more hateful and it seemed
In that dread passion of intolerableness
A vital portion with my very flesh
And bone and tissue consubstantiate,
No alien bondage but myself sin-rotted
And dead. But now my consecrated will
Arose in arms and with its larger choice
Upheld me, as I stooped exceedingly
Beneath the inward load, and felt my limbs
Relax a faithless moment in the pains
Insufferable and their dark secret strife,
And lifted me as though on wings above
The passing weakness which had made me water;
Till in the glow and flow of strength renewed
And added powers, I trod temptation down
Below my feet, and mounted higher yet
Upon its dust that fashioned for my feet
Foundations firm and new defensiveness.
And when at last hardly I reached the summit,
The cross I carried was no cross at all
But the mere empty shadow of a fate
That was not mine, the phantom of a woe,
Imagination's trick—no more, no less—
Which aped the ripeness of reality.
My pangs, and the bleak road unbeautiful,
The dreary drudging to the castled top
Consummate in its height, the rough hewn steps,
The iron great hands of winds that by the throat
Clutched me o'erwearied and contestingly
Strove with me to the death, the dizzy ledge,
The sudden chasms and corners, and the grim
Magnificence of sheer sharp headlong falls
Down into empty space and nothingness,
The discipline, the yoke, the angry edges
That cut like cruel swords, the beetling points
Of bayonetted bounds that shut me in,
And the lone horror of the haunted peak;
All these were rooted in rich outwardness,
But not the burden of the blessèd cross
Which while I bare I bare not verily
Save in belief, though its pure virtue ran
Right through my inmost being and was mingled
With every act and thought, and shaped my path
Unto the pattern of its archetype.
And thus I found, who passed the golden gate,
The seeming and the substance were both one,
And truth was beauty but the vision more.