 | Benedicite and Other Poems |  |
56
St. James the Just.
The first Bishop of Jerusalem, and the author of the Epistle of St. James—whose words in chapter v., verse 9, correspond with and illustrate the question put to the martyr by his Jewish enemies.
That rent the ears of James surnamed the Just,
The brother of the Lord; ere yet they thrust—
Those miscreant Jews—their victim from on high.
Down from that battlement against the sky
The Saint was dashed upon the pavement-dust;
While his last breath reiterates his trust,—
“Before the door He stands—the Lord is nigh:”
Never so nigh as when with loving hand
He lifts the latch of that mysterious door,
Which softly opens to His sole command—
Showing the glory of the golden floor,
The beauty of the unimagined land,
Where with His own He walks for evermore!
| Benedicite and Other Poems | |