| TO make the Body and the Spirit one | |
| With all right things, till no thing live in vain | |
| From morn to noon, but in sweet unison | |
| With every pulse of flesh and throb of brain | |
| The Soul in flawless essence high enthroned, | 5 |
| Against all outer vain attack invincibly bastioned, | |
| |
| Mark with serene impartiality | |
| The strife of things, and yet be comforted, | |
| Knowing that by the chain causality | |
| All separate existences are wed | 10 |
| Into one supreme whole, whose utterance | |
| Is joy, or holier praise! ah! surely this were governance | |
| |
| Of Life in most august omnipresence, | |
| Through which the rational intellect would find | |
| In passion its expression, and mere sense, | 15 |
| Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind, | |
| And being joined with it in harmony | |
| More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary, | |
| |
| Strike from their several tones one octave chord | |
| Whose cadence being measureless would fly | 20 |
| Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord | |
| Return refreshed with its new empery | |
| And more exultant power,—this indeed | |
| Could we but reach it were to find the last, the perfect creed. | |
| |
| O smitten mouth! O forehead crowned with thorn! | 25 |
| O chalice of all common miseries! | |
| Thou for our sakes that loved thee not hast borne | |
| An agony of endless centuries, | |
| And we were vain and ignorant nor knew | |
| That when we stabbed thy heart it was our own real hearts we slew. | 30 |
| |
| Being ourselves the sowers and the seeds, | |
| The night that covers and the lights that fade, | |
| The spear that pierces and the side that bleeds, | |
| The lips betraying and the life betrayed; | |
| The deep hath calm: the moon hath rest: but we | 35 |
| Lords of the natural world are yet our own dread enemy. | |
| |
| Is this the end of all that primal force | |
| Which, in its changes being still the same, | |
| From eyeless Chaos cleft its upward course, | |
| Through ravenous seas and whirling rocks and flame, | 40 |
| Till the suns met in heaven and began | |
| Their cycles, and the morning stars sang, and the Word was Man! | |
| |
| Nay, nay, we are but crucified, and though | |
| The bloody sweat falls from our brows like rain, | |
| Loosen the nails—we shall come down I know, | 45 |
| Stanch the red wounds—we shall be whole again, | |
| No need have we of hyssop-laden rod, | |
| That which is purely human, that is Godlike, that is God. | |
