Silent the gold steals down
The west, and mystery
Moves deeper in their hearts and settles darker.
'Tis faded—the day's crown;
But strange and shadowy
They see the Unseen as night falls stark and starker.
Like priests whose altar fires
Are spent, immovable
They stand, in awful ecstasy uplifted.
Zephyrs awake tree-lyres,
The starry deeps are full,
Earth with a mystic majesty is gifted.
Ah, sunset-lovers, though
Time were but pulsing pain,
And death no more than its eternal ceasing,
Would you not choose the throe,
Hold the oblivion vain,
To have beheld so many a day's releasing?
THE EMPTY CROSS
The eve of Golgotha had come,
And Christ lay shrouded in the garden Tomb:
Among the olives, Oh, how dumb,
How sad the sun incarnadined the gloom!
The hill grew dim—the pleading cross
Reached empty arms toward the closing gate.
Jerusalem, oh, count thy loss!
Oh, hear ye! hear ye! ere it be too late!
Reached bleeding arms—but how in vain!
The murmurous multitude within the wall
Already had forgot His pain—
To-morrow would forget the cross—and all!
They knew not Rome, before its sign,
Bending her brow bound with the nations' threne,
Would sweep all lands from Nile to Rhine
In servitude unto the Nazarene.