Classic Poem

While others write that thou art born, O Christ,
Let me, with large security of faith,
Write, Thou art dead!

Dead and forgotten, and in a cold tomb lying
By some lone hill outside Jerusalem
While the dear mold of thy forsaken body
Long, long ago has fed the twisted stem
Of some wild olive's wind-whipped diadem
Tossed by the tempest,—hear the great winds crying,
Christ, the Christ is dead!

Dead and forgotten, though the world's cathedrals
Trembling with music, blossom into stone.
Up the mighty transept of the lonely ages,
Censers swinging, see the nations pass
Sceptered and mitred, with the keys of heaven,
Shifting shadows in a darkened glass.
Gleaming croziers, children crimson-stoled,
Glory of garments, emerald and gold,
What a wondrous show they make,
Singing, Jesus, for thy sake,
And thou upon the hill-side lying stark and lone.

But hark, a terrible thunder is borne on the wings of time,
The earth is shaken with battle and black with the cannon's breath,
A hundred gory legions leap at the throat of death,
And a million million corpses rise
With flaming eyes
As the walls of beleaguered cities are swarmed in the name of Christ
And dead men drop from the battlements as fast as the living climb.

The seas are swollen with ship-wreck and mighty armadas sweep
For one little golden moment the heaving floor of the sea,
Then sudden the heavens are loosened and down to the fathomless deep
The shattered bones of nations are drifting aimlessly.
The Cross and the Crescent in conflict, emperor, pope, and king,
Broadsword hacking at broadsword, arrow and lance and sling,
Bayonet and javelin, sword and scimitar,
And the scythe of Death the reaper, who laughs when the nations war,
The trumpets and drums of onslaught, the standards streaming red,—
Christ is dead!

No more the fillets white
Press the pale brow of Phrygian prophetess,
Nor from Apollo's shrine breathes forth the oracle divine.
The gods of Greece and Rome are one with Nineveh and Tyre;
And the red fire,
The clang of cymbal and of brass,
Affright no more the silences of night.
Behold them pass,
Isis and Demeter, jovial Tacchus,
Buddha, Mohammed, Odin, Priapus,
And dumb Astarte with the haunting eyes;
The woods are silent to their mysteries,
The shadows echoless.

And must Thou, too, follow their little fame,
Christ of Golgotha and Gethsemane,
Is all the beauty of thy spirit shame,
When men can murder in thy gentle name
And raise thy cross to shelter blasphemy?
Blasphemy of God and thou His messenger,
To drone in churches to their perfumed pews
Empty hosannas on the Christmas morn
When in vile brothels and in shameless stews
Some unacknowledged, birth-cursed Christ is born
Of some sad madonna whom the good folk scorn.

Not in far-off and lonely Bethlehems
Is that low manger in the naked shed;
Not by the walls of dead Jerusalems
Lies the scarred body and the weary head;
But here, each day, with hands that clasp and cling,
With faces stained by foul disease and shame,
With bodies bowed beneath the cross they bring,
Walk the sad Christs, hungering and lame.
Here on the western horizon a waiting people lies,
Born of the centuries' travail, swaddled in prophecies,
Sprung from the loins of Europe, flushed with the strength of youth;
Lead us, O Christ, to know thee in spirit and in truth
Not through the empty mazes of old theology,
Hiding thy simple message in intricate words,
Throning thee in the heavens, turning your life to a creed,
You who knew as a brother the call of a brother's need,
Who knew the glory of serving, of facing with fearless eyes
The shame of a dead religion's charneled hypocrisies,
And drove in thy flaming anger with a whip of knotted cord
The shrinking slaves from the Temple, who buy and sell their Lord.

Come to us, O Jesus, come as you came of yore
When you walked with Andrew and Peter by the Galilean shore,
And called to the young men fishing, as I to the hearts of men,
Is it strange that the loving Jesus should wander his world again?

Out of the daily sacrifice of the mother for her children,
Out of the tender love of the father who faces a certain death that his little ones may live,
Out of the wisdom of old people who see more than their grandchildren see,
Out of the innocent questions of babies, and the beautiful strength of young men,
Out of the purity of young girls and the wide-eyed wonder of their dreams,
Out of the deep love of comrades who never tell their love,
Out of all that is true and strong and divine in the weakest and most sinful,
I will lead the hearts of men to know the real Jesus,
The lover of men and of women and of little children,
The interpreter of all the loveliness of earth and of a life not lived alone;
And in America I shall found for him a new and everlasting kingdom,
The kingdom of human love in the democracy of kindness;
And then with the voice of thanksgiving and with the sound of world-rejoicing
We shall cry aloud—all of us—new-found comrades and lovers,

“Christ is not dead!
He liveth and worketh in common with God the Father,
And his dwelling-place is in the homely heaven of the human heart!”