Now every day thy love I meet, As o'er the earth it wanders wide, With weary step and bleeding feet, Still knocking at the heart of pride And offering grace, though still denied.
Go! 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; 10 This fruitless husk which dustward dries Hath been a heart once, hath 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! 20 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? I gave thee of my seed to sow, Bringest thou me my hundredfold?' 30 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 a brother heart? 40
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,' 50 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.