The Vision of Prophecy and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Though Thou didst come into our world by night,
And with no glory wrap Thyself about,
Yet soon around Thy goings what a light
Of beauty and of majesty broke out!

Beneath the meekness of Thy mortal guise,
His God Incarnate man disdained to own,
Though through the earthly veil before his eyes
Some gleams of that indwelling brightness shone.

Yet Nature owned Thee, in the listening pause,
The hushed and holy stillness of the land;
She knew her Maker's step; her iron laws
Relaxed their ancient rigour in Thy hand.

She saw, within Thy body's temple shrined,
Unsceptred majesty for her to greet;
Thy voice went through her elements like wind;
And all her realms poured tribute at Thy feet.

All spirits, too, here working good or ill,
Felt in Earth's air the pulse of holy breath,
Thine every footfall an electric thrill
Sent both to Heaven above and Hell beneath.

From Thine uplifted arm, and in the sound
Of Thy mild voice, went forth a power divine;
Its deeds are Time's Evangels; and around
Thy Manhood's brow—a ring of stars—they shine.

I.

The festal wine is spent, but Thou art near,
At Thy command the spring of gladness rose;
A purple shadow tints the water clear,
And every lustral vessel overflows.

Through summer suns and soft-distilling rains,
The juices crimson in the swelling grape;
But to the end which Nature slowly gains
The Lord of Nature passes at a step.

Charmed by mere contact with Thy naked feet,
The swinging waves—a floor of marble—stand,
Firm is Thy tread on Galilee to meet
The weary rowers longing for the land.

Awed by Thine eye the stormy winds are still,
The sea controls its madness at Thy frown;
And, where Thy finger points, the fishes fill
The nets which all the night hung idly down.

Thou, King of Heaven, wilt honour earthly kings,
And Cæsar's dues at Cæsar's customs pay;
A fish to Peter's hook, the stater brings,
Where, rusting in Gennesaret's ooze, it lay.

When crowds went with Thee to a desert place,
Thou wouldst not send them faint to towns remote,
But from a stripling's scanty scrip, Thy grace
For all a plentiful provision brought.

Thy blessing into his small loaves did pass,
Thy meek dividing hands held store of bread;
The Twelve went to and fro upon the grass,
Till all the rankèd multitudes were fed.

The wayside fig, so falsely clothed with leaves,
Yields to Thy simple appetite no fruit,—
The worthless tree Thy brief rebuke receives,
And presently it withers from the root.

How many are the ills that fret and waste,
Since Sin first blighted it, this frame of man!
These owned Thy presence too,—where'er it passed,
The streams of grace remedial freely ran.

Salvation, joy, and life, sprung up beneath
Thy steps; Thy shadow blessed the common road,
The tainted air waxed pure within Thy breath;
And healing virtue from thy raiment flowed.

The long-stopped ear flew open at Thy touch;
Through the dead limb a tingling vigour steals;
The wayside beggar casts aside his crutch;
And leprosy's white mask man's face reveals.

The moulded clay was then as euphrasy;
Which cleared the vision from its life-long haze;
And fettered tongues, in sudden sound let free,
Like bells long muffled, rung a peal of praise.

Heaven had its eye upon Thee from afar:
It watched the course it joyed to see begun;
Thy birth was greeted by a kindled star,
Thy death lamented by a darkened sun.

No boding planet screened it from the sight,
The Paschal moon was broad upon the sky,
When thou, O sun! didst veil thy sacred light
In sympathy with His expiring cry!

II.

Through that so fatal breach which Sin had made
In this our citadel, Death entered too,
His gloomy banner on its wall displayed,
And with a tyrant's frenzy smote and slew.

The strong man, armed securely, kept his hold,
And feared no rival in his bloody reign;
But Thou, a mightier than the Anarch old,
Didst spoil and crush him in his own domain.

Thrice, ere Thine own death undermined his sway,
Thou didst confront him in his lawless range;
Thrice from his stiffening grasp redeem the prey,
And give him warning of the coming change.

The maiden from her couch, the youth of Nain
From out his shroud, and Lazarus from his cave,
Rose at Thy summoning call to life again,
And Death could trust no more the faithless grave.

His four-days' captive,—to Thy quiet force
The King of Terrors yielded; and Decay,
The dark-winged vulture perched upon the corse,
Rose at thy rustling step, and soared away.

The Arch-Apostate, with a true presage,
Had garrisoned the earth with troops of hell,
But bootless was the war he thought to wage,
Where'er the shadow of Thy presence fell.

The first man, in God's blooming garden placed,
He could seduce and ruin with a lie,—
He met Thee fainting in the herbless waste,
And quailed before the glancing of Thine eye.

Even where his masterdom securest seemed,
He howling left the bodies he possessed;
And in the synagogues where men blasphemed,
The devils raged and trembled, but confessed.

Thy lifted finger struck the fiends with dread,—
They felt on earth that unconsuming ire
Which kindled hell before them as they fled,
Gleam forth and smite them with its scathing fire.

III.

Thy noblest gift, alas! was seldom sought
By men so sensitive to outward ill,—
The miracle which grace redeeming wrought
In the deep sphere of spirit and of will.

Thy mercy healed the deepest wound of life,
Through Nature's bitter springs new sweetness poured,
Fulfilled its longings, and assuaged its strife,
And all its beauty and its strength restored.

The power that purified the heart from sin,
That weeded out the thistles of the Fall,
And made all holy virtues bloom therein,—
This was the greatest miracle of all.

This blessed Samaria's outcast by the well,—
Unsealed the twin founts of the Magdalene's eyes,—
Threw on the robber's cross, when darkness fell
Upon Thine own, a gleam of paradise.

To crush the power of man's relentless Foe,
Thy conquering goodness made its bright displays;
And thou in self-devoted love didst go,
A Man of Sorrows, on our earthly ways.

And all the outward wonders of Thy grace
Were types of this great mystery within,—
Shadowed the full redemption of our race
From all the dark far-branching woes of sin.

Once hadst Thou seen the proud Archangel fall
Like lightning from the heaven in which he shone;
Now Thou didst drive him from man's spirit, all
The heaven in which remains to him a throne.

Yet while amazed that wondrous power I see,
Which for all other woes unwearied wrought,
More wondrous seems the deep humility
Which for its own distress took never thought.

Beneath the shadow of Sin's gilded domes,
Thou hadst not where, O Christ! to lay Thy head;
Thou sentest thousands joyful to their homes,
From deserts where their Saviour wanted bread.

Thou couldst have brought provision from the flints,
But wast content our hunger to endure;
And the uncounted wealth of royal mints
Was Thine,—but Thou for sinners' sakes wert poor.

The rich in purple robe Thy temple trod;
But Thou the poor man's garb didst meekly wear,
And daily live by trusting to the God
Who feeds the wandering sparrows of the air.

Thou once wert robed in purple, but in jest;
Once tasted Pilate's wine, but mixed with myrrh;
It was Thy corpse that was with linen dressed,
Thy grave in which the costly spices were.

Thy false apostle made his covenant good,
And to the garden led the midnight band,
While troops of armèd angels round Thee stood,
And waited but a signal from Thy hand.

But Thou, O Lamb of God! wert dragged to death,
And, sinless, didst the sinner's doom abide,
And strength immortal slumbered in its sheath,
While He who owned it groaned, and bled, and died.

O crowning miracle of matchless grace,
To man unknown, though acted every hour,
That drew the veil across the Godhead's face,
And clenched the hand upon the Godhead's power!

On earth, O Lord! we hear Thy voice no more,—
Nor see to men Thy mortal vision given,—
Yet I rejoice that what Thou didst before,
Thou still canst do in human hearts from heaven.

O work in me this mystery of Thy grace,
Uplift my spirit, by Thy power divine,
To that calm faith which, seeing not Thy face,
Rests in Thy love, and asks no outward sign!