The Black Christ & Other Poems/The Black Christ

by Countee Cullen

The Black Christ

(Hopefully dedicated to White America)

The Black Christ

1

GOD'S glory and my country's shame,And how one man who cursed Christ's nameMay never fully expiateThat crime till at the Blessed GateOf Heaven He meet and pardon meOut of His love and charity;How God, who needs no man's applause,For love of my stark soul, of flawsComposed, seeing it slip, did stoopDown to the mire and pick me up,And in the hollow of His handEnact again at my commandThe world's supremest tragedy,Until I die my burthen be;How Calvary in Palestine,Extending down to me and mine,Was but the first leaf in a lineOf trees on which a Man should swingWorld without end, in sufferingFor all men's healing, let me sing. O world grown indolent and crass,I stand upon your bleak morassOf incredulity and cryYour lack of faith is but a lie.If you but brushed the scales apartThat cloud your eyes and clinch your heartThere is no telling what grace mightBe leveled to your clearer sight;Nor what stupendous choir breakUpon your soul till you should ache(If you but let your fingers veer,And raised to heaven a listening ear)In utter pain in every limbTo know and sing as they that hymn.If men would set their lips to prayerWith that delight with which they swear,Heaven and earth as bow and string,Would meet, would be attuned and sing.

We are diseased, trunk, branch, and shoot;A sickness gathers at the rootOf us. We flaunt a gaudy fruitBut maggots wrangle at the core.We cry for angels; yet wherefore,Who raise no Jacobs any more? . . .No men with eyes quick to perceiveThe Shining Thing, clutch at its sleeve, Against the strength of Heaven tryThe valiant force of men who die;—With heaving heart where courage singsStrive with a mist of Light and Wings,And wrestle all night long, though pressedBe rib to rib and back to breast,Till in the end the lofty guestPant, "Conquering human, be thou blest."

As once they stood white-plumed and still,All unobserved on Dothan's hill,Now, too, the angels, stride for stride,Would march with us, but are denied.Did we but let our credence sproutAs we do mockery and doubt,Lord Christ Himself would stand revealedIn every barren, frosty fieldThat we misname the heart. BeliefIn something more than pain and grief,In only earth's most commonplace,Might yet illumine every faceOf wretchedness, every blinded eye,If from the hermitage where nighThese thousand years the world of menHas hemmed her in, might come againWith gracious eyes and gentle breathThe still unconquered Lady, Faith. Two brothers have I had on earth,One of spirit, one of sod;My mother suckled one at birth,One was the Son of God.

Since that befell which came to me,Since I was singled out to be,Upon a wheel of mockery,The pattern of a new faith spun;I never doubt that once the sunFor respite stopped in Gibeon,Or that a Man I could not knowTwo thousand ageless years ago,To shape my profit by His loss,Bought my redemption on a cross.

2

"Now spring that heals the wounds of earthIs being born; and in her birthThe wounds of men may find a cure.By such a thought I may endure,And of some things be no less sure.This is a cruel land, this South,And bitter words to twist my mouth,Burning my tongue down to its root,Were easily found; but I am mute Before the wonder of this thing:That God should send so pure a spring,Such grass to grow, such birds to sing,And such small trees bravely to sproutWith timid leaves first coming out.A land spring yearly levies onIs gifted with God's benison.The very odor of the loamFetters me here to this, my home.The whitest lady in the townYonder trailing a silken gownIs less kin to this dirt than I.Rich mistresses with proud heads highThis dirt and I are one to them;They flick us both from the bordered hemOf lovely garments we supply;But I and the dirt see just as highAs any lady cantering by.Why should I cut this bond, my son,This tie too taut to be undone?This ground and I are we not one?Has it not birthed and grown and fed me:Yea, if you will, and also bled me?That little patch of wizened cornAching and straining to be born,May render back at some small rateThe blood and bone of me it ate. The weevil there that rends apartMy cotton also tears my heart.Here too, your father, lean and black,Paid court to me with all the knackOf any dandy in the town,And here were born, and here have grown,His sons and mine, as lean and black.What ghosts there are in this old shackOf births and deaths, soft times and hard!I count it little being barredFrom those who undervalue me.I have my own soul's ecstasy.Men may not bind the summer sea,Nor set a limit to the stars;The sun seeps through all iron bars;The moon is ever manifest.These things my heart always possessed.And more than this (and here's the crown)No man, my son, can batter downThe star-flung ramparts of the mind.So much for flesh; I am resigned,Whom God has made shall He not guide?"

So spake my mother, and her prideFor one small minute in its tideBore all my bitterness away.I saw the thin bent form, the gray Hair shadowed in the candlelight,The eyes fast parting with their sight,The rough, brown fingers, lean with toil,

Marking her kinship to the soil.Year crowding year, after the deathOf that one man whose last drawn breathHad been the gasping of her name, She had wrought on, lit with some flameHer children sensed, but could not see,And with a patient wizardryWheedled her stubborn bit of landTo yield beneath her coaxing hand,And sometimes in a lavish hourTo blossom even with a flower.Time after time her eyes grew dimWatching a life pay for the whimSome master of the land must feedTo keep her people down. The seedThey planted in her children's breastsOf hatred toward these men like beastsShe weeded out with legends howOnce there had been somewhere as nowA people harried, low in the dust;But such had been their utter trustIn Heaven and its field of starsThat they had broken down their bars,And walked across a parted seaPraising His name who set them free.I think more than the tales she told,The music in her voice, the goldAnd mellow notes she wrought,Made us forbear to voice the thoughtLow-buried underneath our love,That we saw things she knew not of. We had no scales upon our eyes;God, if He was, kept to His skies,And left us to our enemies.Often at night fresh from our kneesAnd sorely doubted litaniesWe grappled for the mysteries:"We never seem to reach nowhere,"Jim with a puzzled, questioning air,Would kick the covers back and stareFor me the elder to explain.As like as not, my sole refrainWould be, "A man was lynched last night.""Why?" Jim would ask, his eyes star-bright."A white man struck him; he showed fight.Maybe God thinks such things are right.""Maybe God never thinks at all—Of us," and Jim would clench his small,Hard fingers tight into a ball.

"Likely there ain't no God at all,"Jim was the first to clothe a doubtWith words, that long had tried to sproutAgainst our wills and love of oneWhose faith was like a blazing sunSet in a dark, rebellious sky.Now then the roots were fast, and I Must nurture them in her despite.God could not be, if He deemed right,The grief that ever met our sight.

Jim grew; a brooder, silent, sheathed;But pride was in the air he breathed;Inside you knew an Ætna seethed.Often when some new holocaustHad come to undermine and blastThe life of some poor wretch we knew,His bones would show like white scars throughHis fists in anger's futile way."I have a fear," he used to say,"This thing may come to me some day.Some man contemptuous of my raceAnd its lost rights in this hard place,Will strike me down for being black.But when I answer I'll pay backThe late revenge long overdueA thousand of my kind and hue.A thousand black men, long since goneWill guide my hand, stiffen the brawn,And speed one life-divesting blowInto some granite face of snow.And I may swing, but not beforeI send some pale ambassador Hot footing it to hell to sayA proud black man is on his way."

When such hot venom curled his lipsAnd anger snapped like sudden whipsOf lightning in his eyes, her words,—Slow, gentle as the fall of birdsThat having strained to win aloftSpread out their wings and slowly waftRegretfully back to the earth,—Would challenge him to name the worthContained in any seed of hate.Ever the same soft words would mateUpon her lips: love, trust, and wait.But he, young, quick, and passionate,Could not so readily conceal,Deeper than acid-burns, or steelInflicted wounds, his vital hurt;So still the bitter phrase would spurt:"The things I've seen, the things I see,Show what my neighbor thinks of me.The world is large enough for twoMen any time, of any hue.I give pale men a wide berth ever;Best not to meet them, for I neverCould bend my spirit, never truckleTo them; my blood's too hot to knuckle." And true; the neighbors spoke of himAs that proud nigger, handsome Jim.It was a grudging compliment,Half paid in jest, half fair intent,By those whose partial, jaundiced eyeSaw each of us as one more fly,Or one more bug the summer brings,All shaped alike; antennæ, wings,And noxious all; if caught, to die.But Jim was not just one more fly,For he was handsome in a wayNight is after a long, hot day.If blood flows on from heart to heart,And strong men leave their counterpartIn vice and virtue in their seed,Jim's bearing spoke his imperial breed.I was an offshoot, crude, inclinedMore to the earth; he was the kindWhose every graceful movement said,As blood must say, by turn of head,By twist of wrist, and glance of eye,"Good blood flows here, and it runs high."He had an ease of limb, a raw,Clean, hilly stride that women sawWith quickened throbbings of the breast.There was a show of wings; the nestWas too confined; Jim needed space

To loop and dip and interlace;For he had passed the stripling stage,And stood a man, ripe for the wageA man extorts of life; his gageWas down. The beauty of the yearWas on him now, and somewhere nearBy in the woods, as like as not,His cares were laid away, forgotIn hearty wonderment and praiseOf one of spring's all perfect days.

But in my heart a shadow walkedAt beauty's side; a terror stalkedFor prey this loveliness of time.A curse lay on this land and clime.For all my mother's love of it,Prosperity could not be writIn any book of destinyFor this most red epitomeOf man's consistent crueltyTo man. Corruption, blight, and rustWere its reward, and canker mustSet in. There were too many ghostsUpon its lanes, too many hostsOf dangling bodies in the wind,Too many voices, choked and thinnedBeseeching mercy on its air. And like the sea set in my earEver there surged the steady fearLest this same end and brutal fateMarch toward my proud, importunateYoung brother. Often he'd say,"'Twere best, I think, we moved away."But custom and an unseen handCompelled allegiance to this landIn her, and she by staying nailedUs there, by love securely jailed.

But love and fear must end their bout,And one or both be counted out.Rebellion barked now like a gun;Like a split dam, this faith in oneWho in my sight had never doneOne extraordinary thingThat I should praise his name, or singHis bounty and his grace, let looseThe pent-up torrent of abuseThat clamored in me for release:"Nay, I have done with deitiesWho keep me ever on my knees,My mouth forever in a tuneOf praise, yet never grant the boonOf what I pray for night and day.God is a toy; put Him away. Or make you one of wood or stoneThat you can call your very own,A thing to feel and touch and stroke,Who does not break you with a yokeOf iron that he whispers soft;Nor promise you fine things aloftWhile back and belly here go bare,While His own image walks so spareAnd finds this life so hard to liveYou doubt that He has aught to give.Better an idol shaped of clayNear you, than one so far away.Although it may not heed your labors,At least it will not mind your neighbors'.'In His own time, He will unfoldYou milk and honey, streets of gold,High walls of jasper . . . ' phrases rolledUpon the tongues of idiots.What profit then, if hunger glutsUs now? Better my God should beThis moving, breathing frame of me,Strong hands and feet, live heart and eyes;And when these cease, say then God dies.Your God is somewhere worlds awayHunting a star He shot astray;Oh, He has weightier things to doThan lavish time on me and you. What thought has He of us, three motesOf breath, three scattered notesIn His grand symphony, the world?Once we were blown, once we were hurledIn place, we were as soon forgot.He might not linger on one dotWhen there were bars and staves to flingAbout, for waiting stars to sing.When Rome was a suckling, when Greece was young,Then there were Gods fit to be sung,Who paid the loyal devoteeFor service rendered zealously,In coin a man might feel and spend,Not marked 'Deferred to Journey's End.'The servant then was worth his hire;He went unscathed through flood and fire;Gods were a thing then to admire.'Bow down and worship us,' they said.'You shall be clothed be housed and fed,While yet you live, not when you're dead.Strong are our arms where yours are weak.On them that harm you will we wreakThe vengeance of a God though theyWere Gods like us in every way.Not merely is an honor laidOn those we touch with our accolade; We strike for you with that same blade!'"My mother shook a weary head—"Visions are not for all," she said,"There were no risings from the dead,No frightened quiverings of earthTo mark my spirit's latter birth.The light that on Damascus' roadBlinded a scoffer never glowedFor me. I had no need to viewHis side, or pass my fingers throughChrist's wounds. It breaks like that on some,And yet it can as surely comeWithout the lightning and the rain.Some who must have their hurricaneGo stumbling through it for a lightThey never find. Only the nightOf doubt is opened to their sight.They weigh and measure, search, define,—But he who seeks a thing divineMust humbly lay his lore aside,And like a child believe; confideIn Him whose ways are deep and dark,And in the end perhaps the sparkHe sought will be revealed. PerchanceSome things are hard to countenance,And others difficult to probe;But shall the mind that grew this globe, And out of chaos thought a world,To us be totally unfurled?And all we fail to comprehend,Shall such a mind be asked to bendDown to, unravel, and untwine?If those who highest hold His sign,Who praise Him most with loudest tongueAre granted no high place amongThe crowd, shall we be bitter then?The puzzle shall grow simple whenThe soul discards the ways of dust.There is no gain in doubt; but trustIs our one magic wand. Through itWe and eternity are knit,Death made a myth, and darkness lit.The slave can meet the monarch's gazeWith equal pride, dreaming to daysWhen slave and monarch both shall be,Transmuted everlastingly,A single reed blown on to singThe glory of the only King."

We had not, in the stealthy gloomOf deepening night, that shot our roomWith queerly capering shadows through,Noticed the form that wavered toAnd fro on weak, unsteady feet Within the door; I turned to greetSpring's gayest cavalier, but JimWho stood there balanced in the dimHalf-light waved me away from him.And then I saw how terror streakedHis eyes, and how a red flow leakedAnd slid from cheek to chin. His handStill grasped a knotted branch, and spannedIt fiercely, fondling it. At lastHe moved into the light, and castHis eyes about, as if to wrapIn one soft glance, before the trapWas sprung, all he saw mirrored there:All love and bounty; grace; all fair,All discontented days; sweet weather;Rain-slant, snow-fall; all things togetherWhich any man about to dieMight ask to have filmed on his eye,And then he bowed his haughty head,"The thing we feared has come," he said;"But put your ear down to the ground,And you may hear the deadly soundOf two-limbed dogs that bay for me.If any ask in time to beWhy I was parted from my breath,Here is your tale: I went to deathBecause a man murdered the spring. Tell them though they dispute this thing,This is the song that dead men sing:One spark of spirit God head gaveTo all alike, to sire and slave,From earth's red core to each white pole,This one identity of soul;That when the pipes of beauty play,The feet must dance, the limbs must sway,And even the heart with grief turned lead,Beauty shall lift like a leaf wind-sped,Shall swoop upon in gentle might,Shall toss and tease and leave so lightThat never again shall grief or careFind long or willing lodgement there.Tell them each law and rule they makeMankind shall disregard and break(If this must be) for beauty's sake.Tell them what pranks the spring can play;The young colt leaps, the cat that layIn a sullen ball all winter longBreaks like a kettle into song;Waving it high like a limber flail,The kitten worries his own brief tail;While man and dog sniff the wind alike,For the new smell hurts them like a spikeOf steel thrust quickly through the breast;Earth heaves and groans with a sharp unrest. The poet, though he sang of death,Finds tunes for music in simple breath;Even the old, the sleepy-eyed,Are stirred to movement by the tide.But oh, the young, the aging young,Spring is a sweetmeat to our tongue;Spring is the pean; we the choir;Spring is the fuel; we the fire.Tell them spring's feathery weight will jar,Though it were iron, any barUpreared by men to keep apartTwo who when probed down to the heartSpeak each a common tongue. Tell themTwo met, each stooping to the hemOf beauty passing by. Such aweGrew on them hate began to thawAnd fear and dread to melt and runLike ice laid siege to by the sun.Say for a moment's misty spaceThese had forgotten hue and race;Spring blew too loud and green a blastFor them to think on rank and caste.The homage they both understood,(Taught on a bloody Christless rood)Due from his dark to her brighter blood,In such an hour, at such a time,When all their world was one clear rhyme, He could not give, nor she exact.This only was a glowing fact:Spring in a green and golden gown,And feathered feet, had come to town;Spring in a rich habilimentThat shook the breath and woke the spentAnd sleepy pulse to a dervish beat,

Spring had the world again at her feet.Spring was a lady fair and rich,And they were fired with the season's itchTo hold her train or stroke her hairAnd tell her shyly they found her fair.Spring was a voice so high and clearIt broke their hearts as they leaned to hear In stream and grass and soft bird's-wing;Spring was in them and they were spring.Then say, a smudge across the day,A bit of crass and filthy clay,A blot of ink upon a whitePage in a book of gold; a tightCurled worm hid in the festive rose,A mind so foul it hurt your nose,Came one of earth's serene elect,His righteous being warped and fleckedWith what his thoughts were: stench and smut. . . .I had gone on unheeding butHe struck me down, he called her slut,And black man's mistress, bawdy whore,And such like names, and many more—(Christ, what has spring to answer for!)I had gone on, I had been wise,Knowing my value in those eyesThat seared me through and out and in,Finding a thing to taunt and grinAt in my hair and hue. My rightI knew could not outweigh his mightWho had the law for satellite—Only I turned to look at her,The early spring's first Worshiper,(Spring, what have you to answer for?) The blood had fled from either cheekAnd from her lips; she could not speak,But she could only stand and stareAnd let her pain stab through the air.I think a blow to heart or headHad hurt her less than what he said.A blow can be so quick and kind,But words will feast upon the mindAnd gnaw the heart down to a shred,And leave you living, yet leave you dead.If he had only tortured me,I could have borne it valiantly.The things he said in littlenessWere cheap, the blow he dealt me less,Only they totalled more; he gaggedAnd bound a spirit there; he draggedA sunlit gown of gold and green,—(The season's first, first to be seen)And feathered feet, and a plumed hat—(First of the year to be wondered at)Through muck and mire, and by the hairHe caught a lady rich and fair.His vile and puny fingers churnedOur world about that sang and burnedA while as never world before.He had unlatched an icy door,And let the winter in once more. To kill a man is a woeful thing,But he who lays a hand on spring,Clutches the first bird by its throatAnd throttles it in the midst of a note;Whose breath upon the leaf-proud treeTurns all that wealth to penury;Whose touch upon the first shy flowerGives it a blight before its hour;Whose craven face above a poolThat otherwise were clear and cool,Transforms that running silver dreamInto a hot and sluggish streamThus better fit to countenanceHis own corrupt unhealthy glance,Of all men is most infamous;His deed is rank and blasphemous.The erstwhile warm, the short time sweet,Spring now lay frozen at our feet.Say then, why say nothing moreExcept I had to close the door;And this man's leer loomed in the way.The air began to sting; then sayThere was this branch; I struck; he fell;There's holiday, I think, in hell."

Outside the night began to groanAs heavy feet crushed twig and stone Beating a pathway to our door;A thin noise first, and then a roarMore animal than human grewUpon the air until we knewNo mercy could be in the sound."Quick, hide," I said. I glanced around;But no abyss gaped in the ground.But in the eyes of fear a twigWill seem a tree, a straw as bigTo him who drowns as any raft.So being mad, being quite daft,I shoved him in a closet setAgainst the wall. This would but letHim breathe two minutes more, or three,Before they dragged him out to beQueer fruit upon some outraged tree.Our room was in a moment litWith flaring brands; men crowded it—Old men whose eyes were better sealedIn sleep; strong men with muscles steeledLike rods, whose place was in the field;Striplings like Jim with just a touchOf down upon the chin; for suchMore fitting a secluded hedgeTo lie beneath with one to pledgeIn youth's hot words, immortal love.These things they were not thinking of; "Lynch him! Lynch him!" O savage cry,Why should you echo, "Crucify!"One sought, sleek-tongued, to pacifyThem with slow talk of trial, law,Established court; the dripping mawWould not be wheedled from its prey.Out of the past I heard him say,"So be it then; have then your way;But not by me shall blood be spilt;I wash my hands clean of this guilt."This was an echo of a phraseUttered how many million daysGone by?  Water may cleanse the handsBut what shall scour the soul that standsAccused in heaven's sight?Accused in heaven's sight?"The Kid."One cried, "Where is the bastard hid?""He is not here."    It was a faintAnd futile lie.     "The hell he ain't;We tracked him here. Show us the place,Or else . . ."Or else . . ."He made an ugly face,Raising a heavy club to smite.I had been felled, had not the sight

Of all been otherwise arraigned.Each with bewilderment unfeignedStared hard to see against the wallThe hunted boy stand slim and tall;Dream-born, it seemed, with just a traceOf weariness upon his face,He stood as if evolved from air;As if always he had stood there. . . .What blew the torches' feeble flareTo such a soaring fury now?Each hand went up to fend each brow,Save his; he and the light were one,A man by night clad with the sun.By form and feature, bearing, name,I knew this man. He was the sameWhom I had thrust, a minute past,Behind a door,—and made it fast.Knit flesh and bone, had like a thong,Bound us as one our whole life long,But in the presence of this throng,He seemed one I had never known.Never such tragic beauty shoneAs this on any face before.It pared the heart straight to the core.It is the lustre dying lends,I thought, to make some brief amendsTo life so wantonly cut down. The air about him shaped a crownOf light, or so it seemed to me,And sweeter than the melodyOf leaves in rain, and far more sad,His voice descended on the mad,Blood-sniffing crowd that sought his life,A voice where grief cut like a knife:"I am he whom you seek, he whomYou will not spare his daily doom.My march is ever to the tomb,But let the innocent go free;This man and woman, let them be,Who loving much have succored me."And then he turned about to speakTo me whose heart was fit to break,"My brother, when this wound has healed,And you reap in some other fieldRoses, and all a spring can yield;Brother (to call me so!) then proveOut of your charity and loveThat I was not unduly slain,That this my death was not in vain.For no life should go to the tombUnless from it a new life bloom,A greater faith, a clearer sight,A wiser groping for the light."He moved to where our mother stood, Dry-eyed, though grief was at its flood,"Mother, not poorer losing one,Look now upon your dying son."Her own life trembling on the brim,She raised woe-ravaged eyes to him,And in their glances something grewAnd spread, till healing fluttered throughHer pain, a vision so completeIt sent her humbly to his feetWith what I deemed a curious cry,"And must this be for such as I?"Even his captors seemed to feelDisquietude, an unrest stealUpon their ardor, dampening it,Till one less fearful varlet hitHim across the mouth a heavy blow,Drawing a thin, yet steady flowOf red to drip a dirge of slowFinality upon my heart.The end came fast. Given the startOne hound must always give the packThat fears the meekest prey whose backIs desperate against a wall,They charged. I saw him stagger, fallBeneath a mill of hands, feet, staves.And I like one who sees huge wavesIn hunger rise above the skiff At sea, yet watching from a cliffFar off can lend no feeblest aid,No more than can a fragile bladeOf grass in some far distant land,That has no heart to wrench, nor handTo stretch in vain, could only standWith streaming eyes and watch the play.

There grew a tree a little wayOff from the hut, a virgin treeAwaiting its fecundity.O Tree was ever worthier GroomLed to a bride of such rare bloom?Did ever fiercer hands enlaceLove and Beloved in an embraceAs heaven-smiled-upon as this? Was ever more celestial kiss?But once, did ever anywhereSo full a choir chant such an airAs feathered splendors bugled there?And was there ever blinder eyeOr deafer ear than mine?Or deafer ear than mine?A crySo soft, and yet so brimming filledWith agony, my heart strings thrilledAn ineffectual reply,—Then gaunt against the southern skyThe silent handiwork of hate.Greet, Virgin Tree, your holy mate!

No sound then in the little roomWas filtered through my sieve of gloom,Except the steady fall of tears,The hot, insistent rain that searsThe burning ruts down which it goes,The futile flow, for all one knowsHow vain it is, that ever flows.I could not bear to look at herThere in the dark; I could not stirFrom where I sat, so weighted down.The king of grief, I held my crownSo dear, I wore my tattered gownWith such affection and such love That though I strove I could not move.But I could hear (and this unchainedThe raging beast in me) her painedAnd sorrow-riven voice ring outAbove the spirit's awful rout,Above the howling winds of doubt,How she knew Whom she traveled toWas judge of all that men might doTo such as she who trusted Him.Faith was a tower for her, grimAnd insurmountable; and deathShe said was only changing breathInto an essence fine and rare.Anger smote me and most despairSeeing her still bow down in prayer."Call on Him now," I mocked, "and tryYour faith against His deed, while IWith intent equally as sane,Searching a motive for this pain,Will hold a little stone on highAnd seek of it the reason why.Which, stone or God, will first reply?Why? Hear me ask it. He was youngAnd beautiful. Why was he flungLike common dirt to death? Why, stone,Must he of all the earth atoneFor what? The dirt God used was homely But the man He made was comely.What child creating out of sand,With puckered brow and intent hand,Would see the lovely thing he plannedStruck with a lewd and wanton blade,

Nor stretch a hand to what he made,Nor shed a childish, futile tear,Because he loved it, held it dear?Would not a child's weak heart rebel?But Christ who conquered Death and Hell What has He done for you who spentA bleeding life for His content?Or is the white Christ, too, distraughtBy these dark sins His Father wrought?"

I mocked her so until I brokeBeneath my passion's heavy yoke.My world went black with grief and pain;My very bitterness was slain,And I had need of only sleep,Or some dim place where I might weepMy life away, some misty hauntWhere never man might come to tauntMe with the thought of how men scarTheir brothers here, or what we areUpon this most accursèd star.Not that sweet sleep from which some wakeAll fetterless, without an acheOf heart or limb, but such a sleepAs had raped him, eternal, deep;—Deep as my woe, vast as my pain,Sleep of the young and early-slain.My Lycidas was dead. There swungIn all his glory, lusty, young,My Jonathan, my Patrocles,(For with his death there perished these)And I had neither sword nor song, Only an acid-bitten tongue,Fit neither in its povertyFor vengeance nor for threnody,Only for tears and blasphemy.

Now God be praised that a door should creak,And that a rusty hinge should shriek.Of all sweet sounds that I may hearOf lute or lyre or dulcimer,None ever shall assail my earSweet as the sound of a grating doorI had thought closed forevermore.Out of my deep-ploughed agony,I turned to see a door swing free;The very door he once came throughTo death, now framed for us anewHis vital self, his and no other'sLive body of the dead, my brother's.Like one who dreams within a dream,Hand at my throat, lest I should scream,I moved with hopeful, doubting paceTo meet the dead man face to face.

"Bear witness now unto His grace";I heard my mother's mounting word,"Behold the glory of the Lord,His unimpeachable high seal. Cry mercy now before Him; kneel,And let your heart's conversion swellThe wonder of His miracle."

I saw; I touched; yet doubted him;My fingers faltered down his slimSides, down his breathing length of limb.Incredulous of sight and touch,"No more," I cried, "this is too muchFor one mad brain to stagger through."For there he stood in utmost viewWhose death I had been witness to;But now he breathed; he lived; he walked;His tongue could speak my name; he talked.He questioned me to know what artHad made his enemies depart.Either I leaped or crawled to whereI last had seen stiff on the airThe form than life more dear to me;But where had swayed that miseryNow only was a flowering treeThat soon would travail into fruit.Slowly my mind released its muteBewilderment, while truth took rootIn me and blossomed into light:"Down, down," I cried, in joy and fright,As all He said came back to me With what its true import must be,"Upon our knees and let the worst,Let me the sinfullest kneel first;O lovely Head to dust brought lowMore times than we can ever knowWhose small regard, dust-ridden eye,Behold Your doom, yet doubt You die;O Form immaculately born,Betrayed a thousand times each morn,As many times each night denied,Surrendered, tortured, crucified!Now have we seen beyond degreeThat love which has no boundary;Our eyes have looked on Calvary."

No sound then in the sacred gloomThat blessed the shrine that was our roomExcept the steady rise of praiseTo Him who shapes all nights and daysInto one final burst of sun;Though with the praise some tears must runIn pity of the King's dear breathThat ransomed one of us from death.

The days are mellow for us now;We reap full fields; the heavy bough Bends to us in another land;The ripe fruit falls into our hand.My mother, Job's dark sister, sitsNow in a corner, prays, and knits.Often across her face there flitsRemembered pain, to mar her joy,At Whose death gave her back her boy.While I who mouthed my blasphemies,Recalling now His agonies,Am found forever on my knees,Ever to praise her Christ with her,Knowing He can at will conferMagic on miracle to proveAnd try me when I doubt His love.If I am blind He does not see;If I am lame He halts with me;There is no hood of pain I wearThat has not rested on His hairMaking Him first initiateBeneath its harsh and hairy weight.He grew with me within the womb;He will receive me at the tomb.He will make plain the misty pathHe makes me tread in love and wrath,And bending down in peace and graceMay wear again my brother's face. Somewhere the Southland rears a tree,(And many others there may beLike unto it, that are unknown,Whereon as costly fruit has grown).It stands before a hut of woodIn which the Christ Himself once stood—And those who pass it by may seeNought growing there except a tree,But there are two to testifyWho hung on it . . . we saw Him die.Its roots were fed with priceless blood.It is the Cross; it is the Rood.

Paris, January 31, 1929.