Thy followers to-day are less like Thee, The crucified, than those who made Thee die, Good Jesus, wandering all ways awry From rules prescribed in Thy wise charity. The saints now most esteemed love lying lips, Lust, strife, injustice; sweet to them the cry Drawn forth by monstrous pangs from men that die: So many plagues hath not the Apocalypse As these wherewith they smite Thy friends ignored-- Even as I am; search my heart, and know; My life, my sufferings bear Thy stamp and sign. If Thou return to earth, come armed; for lo, Thy foes prepare fresh crosses for Thee, Lord! Not Turks, not Jews, but they who call them Thine.
O Death, the wage of our first father's blame, Daughter of envy and nonentity, Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry, Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame! Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim, Crying that all things are subdued to thee, Against the Almighty raised almightily?-- The proofs that prop thy pride of state are lame. Not to serve thee, but to make thee serve Him, He stoops to Hell. The choice of arms was thine; Yet art thou scoffed at by the crucified! He lives--thy loss. He dies--from every limb, Mangled by thee, lightnings of godhead shine, From which thy darkness hath not where to hide.
O you who love the part more than the whole, And love yourself more than all human kind, Who persecute good men with prudence blind Because they combat your malign control, See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school, Each sect profane, o'erthrown by his great mind, Whose best our good to Deity refined, The while they thought Death triumphed o'er his soul. Deem you that only you have thought and sense, While heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth, Scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence? Fool! what produced you? These things gave you birth: So have they mind and God. Repent; be wise! Man fights but ill with Him who rules the skies.
Here bend in boundless wonder; bow your head: Think how God's deathless Mind, that men might be Robed in celestial immortality (O Love divine!), in flesh was raimented: How He was killed and buried; from the dead How He arose to life with victory, And reigned in heaven; how all of us shall be Glorious like Him whose hearts to His are wed: How they who die for love of reason, give Hypocrites, tyrants, sophists--all who sell Their neighbours ill for holiness--to hell: How the dead saint condemns the bad who live; How all he does becomes a law for men; How he at last to judge shall come again!