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Long o’er his bent brows linger’d Averill,
His face magnetic to the hand from which
Livid he pluck’d it forth, and labor’d thro’
His brief prayer-prelude, gave the verse `Behold,
Your house is left unto you desolate!’
But lapsed into so long a pause again
As half amazed half frighted all his flock:
Then from his height and loneliness of grief
Bore down in flood, and dash’d his angry heart
Against the desolations of the world.

Never since our bad earth became one sea,
Which rolling o’er the palaces of the proud,
And all but those who knew the living God–
Eight that were left to make a purer world–
When since had flood, fire, earthquake, thunder wrought
Such waste and havoc as the idolatries,
Which from the low light of mortality
Shot up their shadows to the Heaven of Heavens,
And worshipt their own darkness as the Highest?
`Gash thyself, priest, and honor thy brute Baal,
And to thy worst self sacrifice thyself,
For with thy worst self hast thou clothed thy God.’
Then came a Lord in no wise like to Baal.
The babe shall lead the lion. Surely now
The wilderness shall blossom as the rose.
Crown thyself, worm, and worship thine own lusts!–
No coarse and blockish God of acreage
Stands at thy gate for thee to grovel to–
Thy God is far diffused in noble groves
And princely halls, and farms, and flowing lawns,
And heaps of living gold that daily grow,
And title-scrolls and gorgeous heraldries.
In such a shape dost thou behold thy God.
Thou wilt not gash thy flesh for HIM; for thine
Fares richly, in fine linen, not a hair
Ruffled upon the scarfskin, even while
The deathless ruler of thy dying house
Is wounded to the death that cannot die;
And tho’ thou numberest with the followers
Of One who cried `leave all and follow me.’
Thee therefore with His light about thy feet,
Thee with His message ringing in thine ears,
Thee shall thy brother man, the Lord from Heaven,
Born of a village girl, carpenter’s son,
Wonderful, Prince of peace, the Mighty God,
Count the more base idolater of the two;
Crueller: as not passing thro’ the fire
Bodies, but souls–thy children’s–thro’ the smoke,
The blight of low desires–darkening thine own
To thine own likeness; or if one of these,
Thy better born unhappily from thee,
Should, as by miracle, grow straight and fair–
Friends, I was bid to speak of such a one
By those who most have cause to sorrow for her–
Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well,
Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn,
Fair as the Angel that said `hail’ she seem’d,
Who entering fill’d the house with sudden light.
For so mine own was brighten’d: where indeed
The roof so lowly but that beam of Heaven
Dawn’d sometime thro’ the doorway? whose the babe
Too ragged to be fondled on her lap,
Warm’d at her bosom? The poor child of shame,
The common care whom no one cared for, leapt
To greet her, wasting his forgotten heart,
As with the mother he had never known,
In gambols; for her fresh and innocent eyes
Had such a star of morning in their blue,
That all neglected places of the field
Broke into nature’s music when they saw her.
Low was her voice, but won mysterious way
Thro’ the seal’d ear to which a louder one
Was all but silence–free of alms her hand–
The hand that robed your cottage-walls with flowers
Has often toil’d to clothe your little ones;
How often placed upon the sick man’s brow
Cool’d it, or laid his feverous pillow smooth!
Had you one sorrow and she shared it not?
One burthen and she would not lighten it?
One spiritual doubt she did not soothe?
Or when some heat of difference sparkled out,
How sweetly would she glide between your wraths,
And steal you from each other! for she walk’d
Wearing the light yoke of that Lord of love,
Who still’d the rolling wave of Galilee!
And one–of him I was not bid to speak–
Was always with her, whom you also knew.
Him too you loved, for he was worthy love.
And these had been together from the first;
They might have been together till the last.
Friends, this frail bark of ours, when sorely tried,
May wreck itself without the pilot’s guilt,
Without the captain’s knowledge: hope with me.
Whose shame is that, if he went hence with shame?
Nor mine the fault, if losing both of these
I cry to vacant chairs and widow’d walls,
“My house is left unto me desolate.”