THE STREAM

How many Christs have we two crucified;

How many prophets have we sawn asunder;

What wild woe have we wrought: how deep, how wide

The wrong committed! In the sky God's thunder

Threatens, His lightning cleaves the clouds apart

To show an awful Face —

The Judge is in His place

Of Judgment! Oh, the love

That we have lost! Above,

Beneath and all around us sounds the cry

Of Rachel weeping over little hands

And little feet! Her babes are dead! You, I,

Alone are guilty; for while error stands

Must all the starry Christs be crucified!

Nay, do not hang your head:

Though Christs be crucified,

And Rachel's babes are dead,

One river floweth wide

Out of the urge of God;

Of that eternal stream —

Its mother-bosom broad

With vision and with dream —

Are you, Comrade and I!

Yea, all its ancient shores

That river runneth by

Have we touched. Where it pours

Past leagues of desert-sand,

Jungles and miry places,

Palms of an unknown land,

Ferns and their fronded faces;

Have we gone forth from God!

Where slimy serpents crawl,

And crocodiles are torpid in the sun;

Where snarling tigers sprawl,

And elephants come slowly one by one

Down the yellow ridges

Of the banyan's broken bridges

To the river where the little shells are strawed;

Where chattering monkeys leap,

And the flamingo struts among the reeds;

Where parrots pause and peep,

And all day long the greedy ibis feeds:

We went flowing, flowing,

And eternally out-going

From the impulse of the mighty love of God!

Lift up your head, O my Brother, my friend!

Know that your shame is the shame of the stream —

Memory floods all its banks, but the end —

What is the end?‘ Tis a realized dream

Dreamt in the depths of an infinite peace

Ere the first star of the morning arose

Over the earth! Since that river's release

From the pure spring, how it flows! How it flows,

Bears on its bosom the sorrows of man,

Sin and the wreckage of faith and of truth,

Lust and hot murder, the primitive ban:

“Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”!

Yet that same bosom babe Moses did bare

Safe in his cradle of wattles! Its tide

Floated the tree on which Christ, crucified,

Bled for His love of the stream and His share

Of the Past!

Lift up your head and endure!

Are we not part of the All, and as pure?