Page:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu/28

 Driven by a divine bitterness,

Impatiently He bared

His body to the thongs

As if a lover of his kind could not agree

In such a world as this

To any form of death save by the abhorrèd tree,

And by deliberate will

United Love to man's extremest ill.

3.

O Thou Whom men call Father, Who dost taste

An infinite pain in infinite ways, and share

Each pang we bear,

Pierced through with sorrow at the abysmal waste

Wherewith the creature

Gropes his way on in age-long strife with nature,

How shall these know of Thee

Whose years were circled with malignancy?

How shall they know Thee father save Thou prove

To the uttermost Thy love?

They heard no tale of Thee.

Earth's frozen landscapes, unrelenting storms

Let no sign through of that great hearth that warms Eternity.

Cast from the void upon the atrocious years

A lifeless world they trod,

As some dark out-worn earth forgotten even by God,

Ruled by the powers of darkness and a brood

Of Terrors and gaunt Fears.

Born to make hope their spiritual food

They found no trace of good,

Born to breathe God they found no God to breathe;

And they are gone

With no report of mercy to pass on,

No record of compassion to bequeath,

Nor token of Thy grace to testify.

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