Resurrection

Once more I hear the everlasting sea      Breathing beneath the mountain's fragrant     breast,

Come unto Me, come unto Me,      And I will give you rest.

We have destroyed the Temple and in three days    He hath rebuilt it — all things are made new:  And hark what wild throats pour His praise      Beneath the boundless blue.

We plucked down all His altars, cried aloud   And gashed ourselves for little gods of clay!

Yon floating cloud was but a cloud,   The May no more than May.     We plucked down all His altars, left not one      Save where, perchance (and ah, the joy was fleet),   We laid our garlands in the sun      At the white Sea-born's feet.     We plucked down all His altars, not to make      The small praise greater, but the great praise less,       We sealed all fountains where the soul could slake    Its thirst and weariness.     "Love" was too small, too human to be found      In that transcendent source whence love was  born:   We talked of "forces": heaven was crowned      With philosophic thorn.     "Your God is in your image," we cried, but O,     'Twas only man's own deepest heart ye gave,   Knowing that He transcended all ye know,     While — we dug His grave.   Denied Him even the crown on our own brow,     E'en these poor symbols of His loftier reign,   Levelled His Temple with the dust, and now     He is risen,

He is risen again,   Risen, like this resurrection of the year,     This grand ascension of the choral spring,   Which those harp-crowded heavens bend to hear     And meet upon the wing.   "He is dead," we cried, and even amid that gloom     The wintry veil was rent!  The new-born day   Showed us the Angel seated in the tomb     And the stone rolled away.   It is the hour!  We challenge heaven above     Now, to deny our slight ephemeral breath   Joy, anguish, and that everlasting love     Which triumphs over death.