The Altar of Righteousness (VI–VII)

VI.

Since man, with a child's pride proud, and abashed as a child and
afraid,
Made God in his likeness, and bowed him to worship the Maker he
made,
No faith more dire hath enticed man's trust than the saint's whose
creed
Made Caiaphas one with Christ, that worms on the cross might feed.
Priests gazed upon God in the eyes of a babe new-born, and therein
Beheld not heaven, and the wise glad secret of love, but sin.
Accursed of heaven, and baptized with the baptism of hatred and
hell,
They spat on the name they despised and adored as a sign and a
spell.
"Lord Christ, thou art God, and a liar: they were children of
wrath, not of grace,
Unbaptized, unredeemed from the fire they were born for, who smiled
in thy face."
Of such is the kingdom--he said it--of heaven: and the heavenly
word
Shall live when religion is dead, and when falsehood is dumb shall
be heard.
And the message of James and of John was as Christ's and as love's
own call:
But wrath passed sentence thereon when Annas replied in Paul.
The dark old God who had slain him grew one with the Christ he
slew,
And poison was rank in the grain that with growth of his gospel
grew.
And the blackness of darkness brightened: and red in the heart of
the flame
Shone down, as a blessing that lightened, the curse of a new God's
name.
Through centuries of burning and trembling belief as a signal it
shone,
Till man, soul-sick of dissembling, bade fear and her frauds
begone.
God Cerberus yelps from his throats triune: but his day, which was
night,
Is quenched, with its stars and the notes of its night-birds, in
silence and light.
The flames of its fires and the psalms of their psalmists are
darkened and dumb:
Strong winter has withered the palms of his angels, and stricken
them numb.
God, father of lies, God, son of perdition, God, spirit of ill,
Thy will that for ages was done is undone as a dead God's will.
Not Mahomet's sword could slay thee, nor Borgia's or Calvin's
praise:
But the scales of the spirit that weigh thee are weighted with
truth, and it slays.
The song of the day of thy fury, when nature and death shall quail,
Rings now as the thunders of Jewry, the ghost of a dead world's
tale.
That day and its doom foreseen and foreshadowed on earth, when
thou,
Lord God, wast lord of the keen dark season, are sport for us now.
Thy claws were clipped and thy fangs plucked out by the hands that
slew
Men, lovers of man, whose pangs bore witness if truth were true.
Man crucified rose again from the sepulchre builded to be
No grave for the souls of the men who denied thee, but, Lord, for
thee.

When Bruno's spirit aspired from the flames that thy servants fed,
The spirit of faith was fired to consume thee and leave thee dead.
When the light of the sunlike eyes whence laughter lightened and
flamed
Bade France and the world be wise, faith saw thee naked and shamed.
When wisdom deeper and sweeter than Rabelais veiled and revealed
Found utterance diviner and meeter for truth whence anguish is
healed,
Whence fear and hate and belief in thee, fed by thy grace from
above,
Fall stricken, and utmost grief takes light from the lustre of
love,
When Shakespeare shone into birth, and the world he beheld grew
bright,
Thy kingdom was ended on earth, and the darkness it shed was light.
In him all truth and the glory thereof and the power and the pride,
The song of the soul and her story, bore witness that fear had
lied.
All hope, all wonder, all trust, all doubt that knows not of fear,
The love of the body, the lust of the spirit to see and to hear,
All womanhood, fairer than love could conceive or desire or adore,
All manhood, radiant above all heights that it held of yore,
Lived by the life of his breath, with the speech of his soul's will
spake,
And the light lit darkness to death whence never the dead shall
wake.
For the light that lived in the sound of the song of his speech was
one
With the light of the wisdom that found earth's tune in the song of
the sun;
His word with the word of the lord most high of us all on earth,
Whose soul was a lyre and a sword, whose death was a deathless
birth.
Him too we praise as we praise our own who as he stand strong;
Him, Æschylus, ancient of days, whose word is the perfect song.
When Caucasus showed to the sun and the sea what a God could
endure,
When wisdom and light were one, and the hands of the matricide
pure,
A song too subtle for psalmist or prophet of Jewry to know,
Elate and profound as the calmest or stormiest of waters that flow,
A word whose echoes were wonder and music of fears overcome,
Bade Sinai bow, and the thunder of godhead on Horeb be dumb.
The childless children of night, strong daughters of doom and
dread,
The thoughts and the fears that smite the soul, and its life lies
dead,
Stood still and were quelled by the sound of his word and the light
of his thought,
And the God that in man lay bound was unbound from the bonds he had
wrought.
Dark fear of a lord more dark than the dreams of his worshippers
knew
Fell dead, and the corpse lay stark in the sunlight of truth shown
true.

VII.

Time, and truth his child, though terror set earth and heaven at
odds,
See the light of manhood rise on the twilight of the Gods.
Light is here for souls to see, though the stars of faith be dead:
All the sea that yearned and trembled receives the sun instead.
All the shadows on the spirit when fears and dreams were strong,
All perdition, all redemption, blind rain-stars watched so long,
Love whose root was fear, thanksgiving that cowered beneath the
rod,
Feel the light that heals and withers: night weeps upon her God.
All the names wherein the incarnate Lord lived his day and died
Fade from suns to stars, from stars into darkness undescried.

Christ the man lives yet, remembered of man as dreams that leave
Light on eyes that wake and know not if memory bid them grieve.
Fire sublime as lightning shines, and exults in thunder yet,
Where the battle wields the name and the sword of Mahomet.
Far above all wars and gospels, all ebb and flow of time,
Lives the soul that speaks in silence, and makes mute earth
sublime.
Still for her, though years and ages be blinded and bedinned,
Mazed with lightnings, crazed with thunders, life rides and guides
the wind.
Death may live or death may die, and the truth be light or night:
Not for gain of heaven may man put away the rule of right.