Classic Poem

A word for thee, thou poor forgotten Jew,
Who loving Mary dreamedst not that she
(Thy kiss worked wonders vaster than she knew!)
Would bear the King of all posterity.

Thou left'st within the world its fairest light,
Obscure begetter of the Nazarene,
Whose passionate love-act in an Eastern night
Produced the grandest soul the world has seen.

Hail, unknown father, undiscerned bridegroom,
Who, having passed to regions dim and far,
Lost in the ages, buried in time's gloom,
Yet left'st within man's world its loveliest star!

A thousand shrines for her, the undefiled,
By blue Italian lake, Italian sea;
Wild worship for the mother of the child —
But from men's lying tongues what word for thee?

What word for thee, without whom none the less
The world had suffered an unmeasured loss?
The Saviour was the fruit of thy caress:
Without thy love had been nor crown, nor cross, —

No cross, no crown, no Jesus. Not one church
Had reared its sacred sign in any land!
And yet no thinker ever thought to search
For thee, — no dreamer cared to understand.

Thou wast not good, it may be — high nor great:
And yet to thee our greatest owed his breath.
Thou wast the watcher at his birth's bright gate,
As Pilate watched beside his gate of death.

Thee thy son's church has chosen to ignore.
The world, with its false sighs and foolish tears,
Crying, " Mary virgin! Mary we adore! "
Has passed thee by for eighteen hundred years.

*****

And what of fatherhood it cared to ascribe
To Jesus' father, this to God it gave;
Dismissed the thought of thee with jeer and gibe
— Thou wast a dead man deep within the grave!

Thou hast been wronged. — The mighty God of flowers,
Of storms, of sunsets, of the human race;
He whose hand sways all destinies of ours;
He with the unseen ever-present face:

He, herder of the clouds, whose right hand drives
The sun's gold chariot through the gleaming sky;
Lord of our birth and master of our lives;
He at whose word red battle's millions die:

He at whose word the chargers of the waves
Leap snowy-maned upon the trembling shore;
Who in the blue gulf digs the great ships' graves;
He whom the stars in all their shrines adore:

Could he not leave to Mary and to thee
Thy child and hers? Why must the Lord divorce
Father from mother? Why must purity,
Truth, love, all suffer through man's fancies coarse?

The truth is grandest. Years may pass away:
Yet by one night's wild love-kiss thou hast won,
Poor Jew, the right through every age to say,
" I loved the mother. Jesus is my son. "