III

Then, soft as the dews of night, As the star of the sundawn bright, As the heart of the sea's hymn deep, And sweet as the balm of sleep,

Arose on the world a light Too pure for the skies to keep. With music sweeter and stranger than heaven had heard When the dark east thrilled with light from a saviour's word

And a God grew man to endure as a man and abide The doom of the will of the Lord of the loud world's tide, Whom thunders utter, and tempest and darkness hide, With larger light than flamed from the peak whereon

Prometheus, bound as the sun to the world's wheel, shone, A presence passed and abode but on earth a span, And love's own light as a river before him ran, And the name of God for awhile upon earth was man.

O star that wast not and wast for the world a sun, O light that was quenched of priests, and its work undone, O Word that wast not as man's or as God's, if God Be Lord but of hosts whose tread was as death's that trod

On souls that felt but his wrath as an unseen rod, What word, what praise, what passion of hopeless prayer, May now rise up to thee, loud as in years that were, From years that gaze on the works of thy servants wrought

While strength was in them to satiate the lust of thought That craved in thy name for blood as the quest it sought? From the dark high places of Rome Far over the westward foam

God's heaven and the sun saw swell The fires of the high priest's hell, And shrank as they curled and clomb And revelled and ravaged and fell.