Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/207

Rh Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs;

The brother of want and blame,

The lover of women and men,

With a love that puts to shame

All passions of mortal ken;—

Yet of all of woman born

His is the scorn of scorn;

Before whose face do fly

Lies, and the love of a lie;

Who from the temple of God

And the sacred place of laws

Drives forth, with smiting rod,

The herds of ravening maws.

'T is he, as none other can,

Makes free the spirit of man,

And speaks, in darkest night,

One word of awful light

That strikes through the dreadful pain

Of life, a reason sane—

That word divine which brought

The universe from naught.

Ah, no, thou life of the heart,

Never shalt thou depart!

Not till the leaven of God

Shall lighten each human clod;

Not till the world shall climb

To thy hight serene, sublime,

Shall the Christ who enters our door

Pass to return no more.