Classic Poem

Curses upon him, men of Nazareth,
For this high sacrilege of holy church
And desecration of our synagogue.
What, shall a wandering gipsy blasphemer,
Dream-visioned and a friend to rogues and tramps
Idling away the busy crowding days
When men are working, set the town on ears
And turn the village upside down with talk
Of God's glad kingdom come again to men?

Have I not known him, son of a carpenter,
Setting a shoulder to his father's trade,
Grimy with sweat and straining with an adz
To smooth the toughened trunk of olive-wood,
Weary with dragging up the rocky street
The beams of half the houses of the town,
And shall this slender staggerer beneath
Such clumsy burdens lift the whole round world
Up to the dizzy pinnacles of God?

Have I not seen him, racing o'er the hills—
Hair in the wind, with sun-browned boyish face,
Chasing the clouds and shepherding the sky,
And shall this thoughtless friend of mountain birds,
This idle playmate of the bees and gray
Sleek-coated foxes, rule Jehovah's throne
In everlasting glory down the years,
And from the buttressed Zion of our faith
Appal the courts of Cæsar and of Baal
With the dark shadow of a bloody sword?

Messias when he comes is king of kings,
But Jesus would be emperor of the poor;
Messias flames a whirlwind of God's wrath,
But Joseph's son proclaims that God is love.

“Love,” does he say? Could I but reach his cheek
He soon would know the wage of blasphemy
To brave within God's holy synagogue
The village elders with his heresies
And artful mouthings of the prophet's word
That he it is Isaiah has foretold
Shall loose the captives, give the blind to see,
And lead the broken-hearted into peace.

What, can he heal us, he who thirsty, drinks,
And hungry, threshes Sabbath corn in ear,
Or faints when weary of the summer sun?
His father needs him; can he find no task
To clothe his brothers, stay his mother's hands,
Or set his sisters singing at their looms,
But he must wander careless, up and down,
Sleep under hedges with his John and James,
Upsetting half the country with his talk
Of love and brotherhood and Father God?

Can he teach me, a rabbi of God's church,
New ways to read the ancient prophecies
Whose eyes grow dim above the yellow rolls,
Whose hands are palsied grasping at the Word;
And he with his young beauty, breathing health,
Lover of men and children's comforter,
Whom women follow as the stars the moon
Across the windy heavens, shall he crowd
Me out the hearts of all our villagers
And pilfer with the turning of a hand
What I have struggled all these years to keep?

Nay, that he shall not. By my fathers' graves
And all the lineage of my tribe I swear
He shall not do it. Old as I am, I vow,
Jehovah helping, that these withered hands
Shall pluck his beard out, crown him with wild thorn,
Throw sand upon his scourged and bleeding back,
And tear his body limb from shining limb.
He will not be so swift for running then,
Nor flash great visions from his sunken eyes.
Those hands that draw men simply at a touch
Shall clasp in darkness crumbling palms of death,
And night forever brood within his brain.

Millions of dreamers stormed as brave as he
The everlasting bulwark of all time,
Setting their aery standards in the breach
And climbing with their silly swords in teeth
Up the great slippery granite sides to die.
Millions of dreamers, and where are they now?
Jehovah liveth, still his ministers
Lift in the Temple pleading hands of prayer,
Emperor and Galilean come and go
And leave their shifting shadows in the glass,
While Aaron's priesthood rule behind the Veil
And holy Tabernacle of the Most High God.

The Temple stands, Jehovah lives, and I
Need no instruction from a carpenter.
My curse upon him for his blasphemy.
Seize him and stone him, men of Nazareth.