The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

He brought no flowers, he brought no gems,
No jewels of earth's diadems;
Within a stable he was born.
With us he suffered day by day;
Upon his brow no gold crown lay,
But only mocking points of thorn.

Not on divine soft banks of rose
Where souls of lovers may repose
Rested the Lord of earth and air.
He found not where to lay his head;
Was cradled where the oxen fed;
A rock-tomb was his sepulchre.

228

No gifts of love, or power, or fame,
Or earthly rank, were his who came
To lift the humble soul on high.
Though not one star without him shone,
Uncrowned he came, he came alone,
He brought no star-wreath from the sky.

Though, long before the first star gleamed,
Within God's bosom Jesus dreamed,
He was content that dream should pass.
He entered, here, a woman's womb,
And let her sacred flesh entomb
All that he felt, all that he was.

The maiden's womb by God so blessed
Bare Jesus, and the maiden's breast
Suckled the living King of kings.
The infant Mary brought to birth
Was king of heaven, and lord of earth
And air, to where the last star swings.

This was God's condescension great:
To enter by that sacred gate
The land of woe, the land of pain.

229

And, having reached this land of ours
Where thorn-points peer from fairest flowers,
What was the fashion of his reign?

He reigned in sinful hearts and weak:
The sinner's soul he came to seek;
He came to dry the sufferer's tears.
He came to tell the worn-out heart,
“Be of good cheer. Lo! mine thou art,
And shalt be through the endless years.”

He came to bid the harlot rise:
To pour God's sunlight through her eyes,
And bid her dark night wane and flee.
He came to bid the whole wide earth
Partake with man, a second birth;
To soothe to rest the restless sea.

He came to bid the waters sink
To quiet on the blue lake's brink;
To say to wild waves, “Peace. Be still!”
He came, that wind-tossed souls might find
A haven for the weary mind:
He came to do the Father's will.

230

The will of him who sends the rain
To touch to green the parched-up plain,
Or sends the sun to charm the air:
The will of him through whom night's hours
Glitter with ceaseless starry flowers
That make the boundless dark fields fair.

The will of him through whom began
The cycle of life that leads to man,
And who is Jesus ended all:
Making in Jesus man complete;
Devising evil's full defeat
Through him, and Satan's abject fall.

The will obeying which he died
Thorn-crowned, a spear thrust through his side
And red nails through his feet and hands:
The will of God through which he rose
And passed into supreme repose,
Peace God's Son only understands.

II.

He came to make the blind eyes see;
To show that human will is free;
That God's will underlies the whole:

231

That, past all weary winds that roar,
Sweet sunlight gilds a golden shore
Where harbourage waits the storm-tossed soul.

He came and suffered here on earth
That man might win the second birth:
His spotless flesh and blood he gave
That man, partaking, might be fed
With heavenly wine and heavenly bread,
And, haply, so elude the grave.

He healed disease that man might know
That pang and torment, throb and throe,
Are not to last for ever such;
That God, who works in every place
Through his own laws of time and space,
Can change those strait laws at a touch.

God binds the laws. They cannot bind
The Lord of nature and mankind.
Can God's own star-crown bruise his head?
Can God, who made both life and death,
Who breathes through dust a living breath,
Not raise the righteous from the dead?

232

Can God, who makes the storm arise
And hurls the thunders through the skies,
Change not, at will, his mode and style?
God, who controls the lightning's fire,
Can he not change, if he desire,
Winter to summer by a smile?

Can he not change man's March to May?
Weave jessamine in December grey
Around his temple-porch at will?
Change ice that stiffens into blue
Calm water, where the reeds renew
Their whispering courtship of the rill?

This is what Jesus came to teach:
That God's sure hand is over each;
That waves may rise, and winds may roar,
But God the King is Lord of all,—
Nor shall a single sparrow fall
From his safe hand for evermore.

Our hairs are numbered—so he said:
Each bright ray of the sunset red
God paints with thoughtful conscious hand.

233

The sunset, be it gold or rose,
Just as he wills it, shines and glows,—
And every wave he leads to land.

Not endless law, but ceaseless will.
This is Christ's gospel-message still:
Will at the heart of all things made.
Not Chance at the world-vessel's helm,
But loving Will throughout the realm
Of life, eternally obeyed.

III.

So he who, ere the world began,
Was God, became in all points man:
God's Son was of a woman born.
God took account of woman then,
And honoured the sweet slave whom men
Have lowered and saddened with their scorn.

God honoured woman.—None can say
Since that far-off first Christmas-Day
That woman hath no share nor part
In God's eternal great designs.
Woman and man God's thought combines:
They dwell together in his heart.

234

So, thus this stormy world of ours
Was entered. Christ's hand gathered flowers;
He watched the sunset and sunrise:
He wandered by the inland sea,
The blue calm Lake of Galilee;
Earth spread her gifts before his eyes.

God, who had made, in epochs long
Anterior to the first bird's song,
Our fiery bright home spin through space,
Appeared, himself, to test the whole:—
The unexplored vast cosmic soul
Was obvious in a human face.

God came himself, his work to try:
To test his sunlit dome of sky;
To see that all had turned out well.
Through Jesus' searching eyes he viewed
The desert waste, the green-leafed wood,
The rocky height, the watered dell.

Through Jesus' eyes he gazed on man:
And here he chiefliest found his plan
Primordial marred and wrenched awry.

235

Man whom he made divinely free,
Ruler of earth, lord of the sea,
Was veriest slave beneath the sky.

And woman, whom God made so sweet,
Was trampled by tyrannic feet:
The queen was harlot now, and slave.
The love that God designed of old
Man's love should win, the women sold;
They bartered now what once they gave.

So, looking on this world of sin,
God saw no hope without, within,
Nought left save only, dying here
At man's own hands, so to restore
Woman—that man's heart might adore;
And man—that woman might revere

Christ,—having entered by the gate
Of birth the world he made so great,
He found so small, so dark, so sad,—
By one path could return to God:
The grim cross pointed out the road,
And Jesus saw it, and was glad.

236

By woman Christ was born. Through men
He reached his Father's home again,
The realm corruption may not see.—
When woman's God so longed to save
That he assumed the flesh she gave,
What was man's answer? Calvary.—