It is too late, too late! The wine is spilled, the altar violate; Now all the foolish virtues of the past — Its joys that could not last,
Its flowers that had to fade, Its bliss so long delayed, Its sun so soon o'ercast, Its faith so soon betrayed,
Its prayers so madly prayed, Its wildly-fought-for right, Its dear renounced delight, Its passions and its pain —
All these stand gray about My bed, like ghosts from Paradise shut out, And I, in torment, lying here alone, See what myself have done —
How all good things were butchered, one by one. Not one of these but life has fouled its name, Blotted it out with sin and loss and shame — Until my whole life's striving is made vain.
It is too late, too late! My house is left unto me desolate. Yet what if here, Through this despair too dark for dreams of fear,
Through the last bitterness of the last vain tear, One saw a face — Human — not turned away from man's disgrace — A face divinely dear —
A head that had a crown of thorns to wear; If there should come a hand Drawing this tired head to a place of rest On a most loving breast;
And as one felt that one could almost bear To tell the whole long sickening trivial tale Of how one came so utterly to fail Of all one once knew that one might attain —
If one should feel consoling arms about, Shutting one in, shutting the black past out — Should feel the tears that washed one clean again, And turn, made dumb with love and shame, to hear:
“My child, my child, do I not understand?”
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