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V.
The unfelt rite at length was done,
The prayer unheard at length was said,
An hour had passed: the noonday sun
Smote on the features of the dead!
And he who stood the doomed beside,
Calm gauger of the swelling tide
Of mortal agony and fear,
Heeding with curious eye and ear
Whate’er revealed the keen excess
Of man’s extremest wretchedness
And who in that dark anguish saw
An earnest of the victim’s fate,
The vengeful terrors of God’s law,
The kindlings of Eternal hate,
The first drops of that fiery rain
Which beats the dark red realm of pain,
Did he uplift his earnest cries
Against the crime of Law, which gave
His brother to that fearful grave,
Whereon Hope’s moonlight never lies,
And Faith’s white blossoms never wave
To the soft breath of Memory’s sighs;
Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
In madness and in blindness stark,
Into the silent, unknown dark?
No, from the wild and shrinking dread,
With which he saw the victim led
Beneath the dark veil which divides
Ever the living from the dead,
And Nature’s solemn secret hides,
The man of prayer can only draw
New reasons for his bloody law;
New faith in staying Murder’s hand
By murder at that Law’s command;
New reverence for the gallows-rope,
As human nature’s latest hope;
Last relic of the good old time,
When Power found license for its crime,
And held a writhing world in check
By that fell cord about its neck;
Stifled Sedition’s rising shout,
Choked the young breath of Freedom out,
And timely checked the words which sprung
From Heresy’s forbidden tongue;
While in its noose of terror bound,
The Church its cherished union found,
Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
The motley-colored mind of man,
Not by the Koran and the Sword,
But by the Bible and the Cord.

VI.
O Thou at whose rebuke the grave
Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
The cold and changed countenance
Broke the still horror of its trance,
And, waking, saw with joy above,
A brother’s face of tenderest love;
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,
And from Thy very garment’s hem
Drew life and healing unto them,
The burden of Thy holy faith
Was love and life, not hate and death;
Man’s demon ministers of pain,
The fiends of his revenge, were sent
From thy pure Gospel’s element
To their dark home again.
Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,
Who in that name the gallows rears,
An awful altar built to Thee,
With sacrifice of blood and tears?
Oh, once again Thy healing lay
On the blind eyes which knew Thee not,
And let the light of Thy pure day
Melt in upon his darkened thought.
Soften his hard, cold heart, and show
The power which in forbearance lies,
And let him feel that mercy now
Is better than old sacrifice.

VII.
As on the White Sea’s charmed shore,
The Parsee sees his holy hill [10]
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o’er,
Yet knows beneath them, evermore,
The low, pale fire is quivering still;
So, underneath its clouds of sin,
The heart of man retaineth yet
Gleams of its holy origin;
And half-quenched stars that never set,
Dim colors of its faded bow,
And early beauty, linger there,
And o’er its wasted desert blow
Faint breathings of its morning air.
Oh, never yet upon the scroll
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
Hath Heaven inscribed “Despair!”
Cast not the clouded gem away,
Quench not the dim but living ray,–
My brother man, Beware!
With that deep voice which from the skies
Forbade the Patriarch’s sacrifice,
God’s angel cries, Forbear

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