Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/461

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Pagan’s myths through marble lips are spoken,
 * And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moan

Round fane and altar overthrown and broken,
 * O’er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone.

Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,
 * The Syrian hill grove and the Druid’s wood,

With mothers offering, to the Fiend’s embraces,
 * Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood.

Red altars, kindling through that night of error,
 * Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eye

Of lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,
 * Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;

Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcasting
 * All heaven above, and blighting earth below,

The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting,
 * And man’s oblation was his fear and woe!

Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaning
 * Of dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer;

Pale wizard priests, o’er occult symbols droning,
 * Swung their white censers in the burdened air:

As if the pomp of rituals, and the savor
 * Of gums and spices could the Unseen One please;

As if His ear could bend, with childish favor,
 * To the poor flattery of the organ keys!

Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy,
 * With trembling reverence: and the oppressor there,

Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly,
 * Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer.

Not such the service the benignant Father
 * Requireth at His earthly children’s hands:

Not the poor offering of vain rites, but rather
 * The simple duty man from man demands.

For Earth He asks it: the full joy of heaven
 * Knoweth no change of waning or increase;

The great heart of the Infinite beats even,
 * Untroubled flows the river of His peace.

He asks no taper lights, on high surrounding
 * The priestly altar and the saintly grave,

No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding,
 * Nor incense clouding up the twilight nave.

For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken:
 * The holier worship which he deigns to bless

Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,
 * And feeds the widow and the fatherless!

Types of our human weakness and our sorrow!
 * Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead?

Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrow
 * From stranger eyes the home lights which have fled?

O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;
 * Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;

To worship rightly is to love each other,
 * Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.