Classic Poem

Here are a few lines in defense declaimed
For them, the blind of soul, the spirit maimed;
The human tragedies who thread our strife;
The debris cast upon the sea of life.
They through all time have tangled His design:
Have marched discordant to the rhythmic line.
Not all the stars that, falling, scar the cheek
Of night, bound in one avalanche, could speak
To them of beauty. Not all music wrung
From the white lips of waters shoreward flung,
Could rouse their souls with harmonies divine.
For them no rose refines her odorous breath;
No king or priest unrolls his shibboleth;
No galaxy of planets nightly shine.
O Folly! place thy mark upon the task
That binds the eye and cries, “See through the mask.”
Rather than bid the night unfold her flowers
Doth Nature lead her to the morning hours.
Rather than ask the waters underground
To sparkle brightly, on a sunless round,
Doth she not lead them out through grassy bowers
And teach them how to bound.
Lord, to such judgment make our verdicts thrall,
And Mercy's foot shall tread our Justice hall.

Whom shall my heart condemn? what law apply
That will have flavor of a judgment just?
So little has been given to some while I
Have been endowed with so divine a trust.
And yet my august soul would shrink in dread
Did I believe an angel judged the dead;
Or held I not the Master knew full well
How subtle was the art to which I fell.
If I then fear such mercy, should not these—
Poor, piteous forms adrift on Life's rough seas—
Dread the untempted judge and his decrees!
Thus saith the Lord: “The judgment seat is mine;
And yet I fill your cup with mercy's wine.
So, likewise, turn to him of weaker will
And his poor measure with thy pity fill.”
O Pity! fairest bloom the soul may wear,
Thou art the verdure on the face of earth
Making the rocks to sing and giving birth
To children of the leaves with laughing hair.

How shall I judge? To sin, the silver chord
That tethers me to beauty, with a sword
Must I first cut; must grow forgetful quite
Of eyes that held my morning in their light:
Must drown remembrance of lips red with love,
And eyes, accustomed to the realms above,
Train earthward. Ah! but these; they are not bound
By one small tether to diviner sound.
They sin because 'tis easiest of the arts;
The single gift of birth endowed their hearts.
Then, Lord, as thy good mercy we desire
Let us not fan our hatred into fire
Against our brothers of the Lesser Will;
But rather let us lead them up, until
They hear the higher music that lures on
The climbing soul that goes to meet the dawn.

When thou shalt judge, O monarch of the Bench,
Thy verdict shall two verdicts ever be;
For if thy poor, proud logic turned on thee
'Twould hang thee twice ere sunset, and the trench
You dig for one would hold you both at night.
The petulance of thy sarcastic smile,
Thy thought ungenerous, in Heaven's sight
Is crime more subtle than the steel's cold guile.
He murders, steals, profanes and yet hurls less
At God than thy one act of bitterness.
Thy crime is all thine own but half the State
Had part in his, and urged him to his fate.
Better than halter or electric chair
Were childhood breathing virtue from clean air.
Better at murder should the State convene
And try itself; learn wherefore hath it been
So loveless toward one man that he should feel
The satisfaction of a piece of steel;
Than that it tread on him with mailed heel.

So soft a babe he lay,
All velvet to the touch, upon the bed.
A mother's failures and a father's faults
Filled half his tiny head.
Then Hate came early and stood by him long,
And taught him all the discords of life's song.
And, last of all, the grim law passed his way
And, with coarse fingers, pressed his unshapen head,
Until, within one chamber, Love lay dead.
Then, when he killed that which he might have loved,
Men stood unmoved;
Or at the wretch their maledictions hurled;
Men who were ushered in a welcome world;
Whose cheeks were rounded by a mother's hand;
Who knew the charmed circle's gentle bliss,
The morning kiss,
The velvet praise and musical command.
O, thou just Heaven, how shall these men know;
These men made moral by birth's accident;
Whose lips have never touched the cup of woe;
Whose garments know of neither stain nor rent?
O righteous judge! O twelve good men and true!
So very full of argument are you,
So robed in ancient garments of the Jew,
I fain would now become debative too;
And ask some simple questions: pray, take note:
Should'st thou upon a street in Heaven meet
A man with livid ring about his throat,
(Rope teeth prints sanctioned by thy judgment seat)
Would that to thee make Paradise more sweet?
Dost think the Christ a gibbet chain could see
And not feel shame for uses of a tree!
And who shall do the bloody deed I ask?
And all the Pilates cry; it shall be flung—
The trick that pulls the cord and swells the tongue
And makes devouring lime a mortal's bed—
Upon our hired assassin; he is dead
To that white vision of a soul's distress.
Whirl, busy loom, and weave a coward's dress
For him who wears a hangman as a mask.
On Satan's ears more pleasant sounds ne'er fell
Than that word “Law” when put to such an end.
They dance to music in the depths of Hell
When mortals such a bloody course defend.

Who fells the tree
Must know the branch goes too:
And with the branch the leaves that wave to me,
And twixt whose faces shineth Heaven's blue.
O Lord, these too, these too,
These proud-faced mothers, circled by strong arms,
These sisters, sacrificial of their charms,
Will hang beside him on the cursed tree.
Jesus they killed; and Mary, too, they slew.
John felt the spear that ran the Master through.
Where stops the hand of State? Tell me, I pray,
And I'll correct you on the Judgment Day.

Can they be Christlike who this thing avow?
The blood of Cain is on that nation's brow
Whose justice will such vengeful course allow.
The pulpit, holding up to man this creed,
Will give its message like a broken reed.
The government that burns her dead with lime,
Despite the churchman's poor, absolving rhyme,
Holds nothing but a licensed seat of crime.
Ye imps of Hell; let your black laughter live.
The pious churchman sends a soul to death,
Saying: “Forgive us Lord as we forgive:”
Old Pharisees of rotten heart and breath.
Laugh, ye black evils, in your caverns laugh;
And write me out for them an epitaph.
For, if the Lord forgives as they forgave,
What cup of mercy shall their spirits save!
What drop of water shall their thirsting quell
In some black cavern of their deeper Hell!
Weep, ye white angels, in the heavens weep;
For Love hath been full many a year asleep.

O ye, who cling unto this Old World wrong,
What comfort can ye find in David's song?
He murdered and, in God's sight, sang the stains
From out his heart. What had a tight rope done
But rob the world of those repentant strains;
As sweet as ever rose beneath the sun!
Yea, farther I would go and say in truth:
This, life for life, this outworn, tooth for tooth,
Hath crushed full many a singer in his youth.

No more: if in the acres of thy heart
The seed sublime of Mercy is not sown
What rain of words or wind of music blown
Will make their fields to blossom with mine art.
To stone I do not sing: the granite soul,
Should I declaim a thousand years, would still
Cleave to the old, outworn Hebraic scroll,
And lift its loveless arm of steel to kill.
And yet in vain I have not roused my rhyme,
For, in some sweeter, nobler hour of Time.
A mother's eyes shall laugh and children play
Because a poet sang this song to-day.

So little has been given to some; to me
Are borne the rarest gifts of land and sea.