Page:Songs before sunrise (IA beforesunrisongs00swinrich).pdf/110

 The soldiers and the high priests part Thy vesture: all thy days are priced, And all the nights that eat thine heart. And that one seamless coat of Christ, The freedom of the natural soul, They cast their lots for to keep whole.

No fragment of it save the name They leave thee for a crown of scorns Wherewith to mock thy naked shame And forehead bitten through with thorns And, marked with sanguine sweat and tears, The stripes of eighteen hundred years

And we seek yet if God or man Can loosen thee as Lazarus, Bid thee rise up republican And save thyself and all of us; But no disciple's tongue can say When thou shalt take our sins away.

And mouldering now and hoar with moss Between us and the sunlight swings The phantom of a Christless cross Shadowing the sheltered heads of kings And making with its moving shade The souls of harmless men afraid.