Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the fathers wise, -
The book itself before me lies, -
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger golden lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowléd portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.

O! leave me, Priest; my soul would be
Alone with the consoler Death;

Far sadder eyes than thine will see
This crumbling clay yield up its breath;
These shrivelled hands have deeper stains
Than holy oil can cleanse away,

Hands that have plucked the world's coarse gains, As erst they plucked the flowers of May.

Call, if thou canst, to these gray eyes

Some faith from youth's traditions wrung;
This fruitless husk which dustward dries
Has been a heart once, has been young:
On this bowed head the awful Past

Once laid its consecrating hands:
The Future in its purpose vast

Paused, waiting my supreme commands.

But look! whose shadows block the door?
Who are those two that stand aloof?

See! on my hands this freshening gore
Writes o'er again its crimson proof!
My looked-for death-bed guests are met,
There my dead Youth doth wring its hands,
And there, with eyes that goad me yet,
The ghost of my Ideal stands !

God bends from out the deep and says,
“I gave thee the great gift of life;
Wast thou not called in many ways?
Are not my earth and heaven at strife?
thee of my seed to sow,

I gave

Bringest thou me my hundred-fold ? " Can I look up with face aglow,

And answer, "Father, here is gold "?

I have been innocent; God knows,
When first this wasted life began,
Not grape with grape more kindly grows
Than I with every brother-man;
Now here I gasp; what lose my kind,
When this fast-ebbing breath shall part?

What bands of love and service bind
This being to the world's sad heart?

Christ still was wandering o'er the earth
Without a place to lay his head;
He found free welcome at my hearth,

He shared my cup and broke my bread;
Now, when I hear those steps sublime,
That bring the other world to this,

My snake-turned nature, sunk in slime,
Starts sideway with defiant hiss.

Upon the hour when I was born,

God said, "Another man shall be," And the great Maker did not scorn Out of himself to fashion me;

He sunned me with his ripening looks, And Heaven's rich instincts in me grew, As effortless as woodland nooks

Send violets up and paint them blue.

Yes, I who now, with angry tears,
Am exiled back to brutish clod,
Have borne unquenched for fourscore years
A spark of the eternal God;

And to what end? How yield I back
The trust for such high uses given?
Heaven's light hath but revealed a track
Whereby to crawl away from heaven.

Men think it is an awful sight
To see a soul just set adrift

On that drear voyage from whose night
The ominous shadows never lift;
But 't is more awful to behold
A helpless infant newly born,
Whose little hands unconscious hold
The keys of darkness and of morn.

Mine held them once; I flung away

Those keys that might have open set

The golden sluices of the day,

But clutch the keys of darkness yet; I hear the reapers singing go

Into God's harvest; I, that might With them have chosen, here below

Grope shuddering at the gates of night.

O glorious Youth, that once was mine!
O high ideal! all in vain

Ye enter at this ruined shrine

Whence worship ne'er shall rise again; The bat and owl inhabit here,

The snake nests in the altar-stone, The sacred vessels moulder near,

The image of the God is gone.