a little water in its hand
          To moisten those poor lips that plead in vain
          With Him we call our Father?  Or is all
          So changed in such as taste celestial joy
          They hear unmoved the endless wail of woe,
          The daughter in the same dear tones that hushed
          Her cradled slumbers; she who once had held
          A babe upon her bosom from its voice
          Hoarse with its cry of anguish, yet the same?

          No! not in ages when the Dreadful Bird
          Stamped his huge footprints, and the Fearful Beast
          Strode with the flesh about those fossil bones
          We build to mimic life with pygmy hands,
          Not in those earliest days when men ran wild
          And gashed each other with their knives of stone,
          When their low foreheads bulged in ridgy brows
          And their flat hands were callous in the palm
          With walking in the fashion of their sires,
          Grope as they might to find a cruel god
          To work their will on such as human wrath
          Had wrought its worst to torture, and had left
          With rage unsated, white and stark and cold,
          Could hate have shaped a demon more malign
          Than him the dead men mummied in their creed
          And taught their trembling children to adore! 
          Made in his image!  Sweet and gracious souls
          Dear to my heart by nature’s fondest names,
          Is not your memory still the precious mould
          That lends its form to Him who hears my prayer? 
          Thus only I behold him, like to them,
          Long-suffering, gentle, ever slow to wrath,
          If wrath it be that only wounds to heal,
          Ready to meet the wanderer ere he reach
          The door he seeks, forgetful of his sin,
          Longing to clasp him in a father’s arms,
          And seal his pardon with a pitying tear!

Four gospels tell their story to mankind,
And none so full of soft, caressing words
That bring the Maid of Bethlehem and her Babe
Before our tear-dimmed eyes, as his who learned
In the meek service of his gracious art
The tones which like the medicinal balms
That calm the sufferer’s anguish, soothe our souls. 
—­Oh that the loving woman, she who sat
So long a listener at her Master’s feet,
Had left us Mary’s Gospel,—­all she heard
Too sweet, too subtle for the ear of man! 
Mark how the tender-hearted mothers read
The messages of love between the lines
Of the same page that loads the bitter tongue
Of him who deals in terror as his trade
With threatening words of wrath that scorch like flame! 
They tell of angels whispering round the bed
Of the sweet infant smiling in its dream,
Of lambs enfolded in the Shepherd’s arms,
Of Him who blessed the children; of the land
Where crystal rivers feed unfading flowers,
Of cities golden-paved with streets of pearl,
Of the white robes the winged creatures wear,
The crowns and harps from whose melodious strings
One long, sweet anthem flows forevermore!