DECEMBER EIGHTH, 1869.
I.
There came an hour, and words were uttered then
That live to-day and echo evermore.
One spoke them to a knot of simple men,
Who simply took the simple sense they bore:
A promise—such as never tongue or pen
Of sage oracular had made before;
And a design no wisdom could have planned,
Save His who holds the nations in his hand.
II.
Had less than God so spoken, he had been
The wildest of all dreamers. What! to make
A poor rude fisher, who had never seen
A gloom upon his Galilæan lake
But feared the menace of its boding mien,
A rock no surge should fret, no tempest shake—
The baffled ages foaming at its feet
The broken malice of their ceaseless beat!
III.
God saith; and who shall gainsay? Devils first;
Then fools, their ready dupes. To these, forsooth,
'Tis nobler to resist, and dare the worst,
Than own the gentle majesty of truth—
As came the church to free a world accurst,
And heal its heartache, and renew its youth:
A spring to thaw the universal frost—
Fire-dowered from her natal Pentecost.
IV.