Classic Poem

There—close your eyes, poor eyes that wept for me!
Pillow your weary head upon my arm.
You need not clutch me so, I will not flee;
Here am I bound by no mere carnal charm.

At last I am not blind, for I can see
Through your mere flesh as only spirit can;
I feel at last the world-old tragedy,
The sacrifice of woman unto man.

In that far time when my first father sought
To cool the strange mad fever in his veins,
Seeing how fair the creature he had bought
With straining sinews and wild battle pains:

Then was this moment of your anguish sown,
And you have reaped but do not understand.
How frail and thin your blue-veined hands have grown,
How trustingly they clutch my guilty hand!

The story of the world is in your face;
I gaze upon it, hearing through dead years
The wailings of the women of the race,
The melancholy fall of many tears.

In many a Garden of Gethsemane,
Sweet with strange odors, redolent of bliss,
Again is played the human tragedy
With Judas waiting in the dark to kiss.

Not only upon Calvary has died
The patient tortured Christ misunderstood;
Over and over is He crucified
Wherever man besmirches womanhood.

I who have laughed too long at sacred things,
Who felt no god about me in the gloom,
Now hear a Something mystical that sings
Sweeter than love, yet terrible as doom.

In your frail face I see a glory grow
That smites me, guilty, like a burning rod!
I kneel before you, suppliant, and know
That your thin hands can lead me unto God!