THE KING OF GLORY

Give us this day a man so strong

He will not falter in his song,

Muting his instrument to please

The backward-glancing Pharisees.

He must be one to whom a child

Comes with sweet laughter, reconciled

From tears because he passes by

Like a white cloud in yonder sky.

Women shall claim him for a friend,

Hail him as brother, gladly spend

The price of spikenard for his head,

Weep at his tomb when he is dead.

From seat of customs or the nets,

Workshop or plough or minarets,

Men will respond to his clear call

And in his battles proudly fall.

This Lord must be no shrouded form

Of God Incarnate, but the norm

Of manhood for an eager age —

Our prophet, poet, teacher, sage.

If sin be missing of the mark,

Sped was the arrow in the dark:

With light shed from that Brother's face,

Each well-aimed bolt shall find its place.

Not to dead yesterdays, but now

Belongs that wide and august brow

From whose vast mind a word shall be

Spoken to set thought-forces free —

Thought-forces fettered by the ban

Of some far-thundering Vatican,

Which from the age of stone to this

Cramped them by every artifice.

He will lift up a mighty hand

Against oppression; will demand

From kings and councils an account

Of stewardship — of the amount

Taken by them in turn for toil

That starves the tiller of the soil;

Will seek to know the reason why

The millions in their hunger cry.

His clear, calm eyes will pierce excuse

Of man defending his abuse

Of power; like a two-edge sword

Will be dividing of his word.

He will not quote some ancient saw —

A text of scripture from the Law,

Nor will he seek by miracle

To blind all reason; he will tell

The tyrant and the turbaned priest:

“Because ye did it to the least

Of these my brothers, made their world

Hell — to that hell be also hurled!

“Forth from your lands into the street;

Huckster and harlot, beggar meet;

Lift from each head its crown of thorn,

And kiss those feet the nails have torn!

“Into the hell of every hate,

Vice and foul lust insatiate,

Descend and learn what ye have done,

Who from earth's children stole the sun;

“Stole field and forest, mountain, river —

Pretending that some royal giver

Bestowed them on your sculptored sires

Sleeping beneath their ancient spires!

“Ye who have taught that God is wrath;

Ye who have driven down the path

Of fear the frightened souls of men;

Ye who have made His house a den

“For thieves to bargain gold for grace:

Ye hypocrites with pious faces

And downcast eyes, your litanies —

Your candle-lights and threnodies

“Rise not to Him who clothes the grass

With glory and whose holy Mass

Is in the olive and the vine —

Not in your wafer and your wine!”

Send such a man again on earth,

As He whom Mary brought to birth,

And whom the people in their pride

Rejected and then crucified!

Only, O God of stone and star!

We will not hale him to the bar

Of Pilate and Caiaphas;

We will lift up the gates of brass

And open wide our golden doors,

Proclaiming while his splendour pours

Over the world he comes to win:

“The King of Glory shall come in!”