Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/370

 This much I'll say, that when the flame

Of reason reassumed its force,

The hell the Christian fears to name,

Was heaven to his fierce remorse.

Just think of him—beneath the ban,

And steeped in sorrow to the neck,

Without a friend—a feeble man,

In failing health—a human wreck.

With all his sense and scholarship,

How could he face his fading wife?

The devil never lifted whip

With thongs like those that scourged his life.

But He in whom the dying thief

Upon the Cross did place his trust,

Forgets the sin and feels the grief,

And lifts the sufferer from the dust.

And now, because I have a dream,

The man and woman found the light;

A glory burns upon the stream,

With gold and green the woods are bright.

But still I hate that haggard street,

Its filthy courts, its alleys wild;

In dreams of it I always meet

The phantom of a wailing child.

The name of it begets distress—

Ah, song, be silent! show no more

The lady in the perished dress,

The scholar on the tap-room floor.

, where the great hills fall away

To bays of silver sea,

I hold within my hand to-day

A wild thing, strange to me.