Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/269

Rh And wild and bloody,—this is his own land.

On such a day, girdled by these same hills,

Prest by this dark-browed, sullen, Orient crowd,

On yonder mount, spotted with crimson blooms,

He closed his eyes, in that dark tragedy

Which mortal spirit never dared to sound.

O God! I saw those eyes in every throng.

Was he divine, and maker of all worlds,—

The Godhead veiled in suffering, for our sins,—

An unimagined splendor poured on earth

In sacrifice supreme,—this was a scene

Fit for the tears of angels and all men.

If he was man—a passionate human heart,

Like unto ours, but with intenser fire,

And whiter from the deep and central glow;

Who loved all men as never man before,

Who felt as never mortal all the weight

Of this world's sorrow, and whose sinless hands

Upstretched in prayer did seem, indeed, to clutch

The hand divine; if he was man, yet dreamed

That the Ineffable through him had power,—

Even through his touch,—to scatter human pain

(Setting the eternal seal on his high hope

And promised kingdom); was he only man,

Thus, thus to aspire, and thus at last to fall!

Such anguish! such betrayal! Who could paint

That tragedy! one human, piteous cry—

Forsaken!"—and black death! If he was God,

'T was for an instant only, his despair;

Or was he man, and there is life beyond,

And, soon or late, the good rewarded are,

Then, too, is recompense.