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“The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world.
The Roman tempest swell’d and swell’d,
And on her head was hurl’d.

“The East bow’d low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.

“So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit grey;
A conquering, new-born joy awoke,
And fill’d her life with day.

“‘Poor world,’ she cried, ‘so deep accurst,
That runn’st from pole to pole
To seek a draught to slake thy thirst–
Go, seek it in thy soul!

“She heard it, the victorious West,
In crown and sword array’d!
She felt the void which mined her breast,
She shiver’d and obey’d.

“She veil’d her eagles, snapp’d her sword,
And laid her sceptre down;
Her stately purple she abhorr’d,
And her imperial crown.

“She broke her flutes, she stopp’d her sports,
Her artists could not please;
She tore her books, she shut her courts,
She fled her palaces;

“Lust of the eye and pride of life
She left it all behind,
And hurried, torn with inward strife,
The wilderness to find.

“Tears wash’d the trouble from her face!
She changed into a child!
‘Mid weeds and wrecks she stood–a place
Of ruin–but she smiled!

“Oh, had I lived in that great day,
How had its glory new
Fill’d earth and heaven, and caught away
My ravish’d spirit too!

“No thoughts that to the world belong
Had stood against the wave
Of love which set so deep and strong
From Christ’s then open grave.

“No cloister-floor of humid stone
Had been too cold for me.
For me no Eastern desert lone
Had been too far to flee.

“No lonely life had pass’d too slow,
When I could hourly scan
Upon his Cross, with head sunk low,
That nail’d, thorn-crowned Man!

“Could see the Mother with her Child
Whose tender winning arts
Have to his little arms beguiled
So many wounded hearts!

“And centuries came and ran their course,
And unspent all that time
Still, still went forth that Child’s dear force,
And still was at its prime.

“Ay, ages long endured his span
Of life–’tis true received–
That gracious Child, that thorn-crown’d Man!
–He lived while we believed.

“While we believed, on earth he went,
And open stood his grave.
Men call’d from chamber, church, and tent;
And Christ was by to save.

“Now he is dead! Far hence he lies
In the lorn Syrian town;
And on his grave, with shining eyes,
The Syrian stars look down.

“In vain men still, with hoping new,
Regard his death-place dumb,
And say the stone is not yet to,
And wait for words to come.

“Ah, o’er that silent sacred land,
Of sun, and arid stone,
And crumbling wall, and sultry sand,
Sounds now one word alone!

“Unduped of fancy, henceforth man
Must labour!–must resign
His all too human creeds, and scan
Simply the way divine!

“But slow that tide of common thought,
Which bathed our life, retired;
Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,
And pulse by pulse expired.

“Its frame yet stood without a breach
When blood and warmth were fled;
And still it spake its wonted speech–
But every word was dead.

“And oh, we cried, that on this corse
Might fall a freshening storm!
Rive its dry bones, and with new force
A new-sprung world inform!

“–Down came the storm! O’er France it pass’d
In sheets of scathing fire;
All Europe felt that fiery blast,
And shook as it rush’d by her.

“Down came the storm! In ruins fell
The worn-out world we knew.
It pass’d, that elemental swell!
Again appear’d the blue;