"I do beseech Thee, God, show me thy face." "Come up to me in Sinai on the morn: Thou shalt behold as much as may be borne." And Moses on a rock stood lone in space. From Sinai's top, the vaporous, thunderous place, God passed in clouds, an earthly garment worn To hide, and thus reveal. In love, not scorn, He put him in a cleft in the rock's base, Covered him with his hand, his eyes to screen, Then passed, and showed his back through mists of years. Ah, Moses! had He turned, and hadst thou seen The pale face crowned with thorns, baptized with tears, The eyes of the true man, by men belied, Thou hadst beheld God's face, and straightway died. EIGHTEEN SONNETS, About Jesus. I. If Thou hadst been a sculptor, what a race Of forms divine had ever preached to men! Lo, I behold thy brow, all glorious then, (Its reflex dawning on the statue's face) Bringing its Thought to birth in human grace, The soul of the grand form, upstarting, when Thou openest thus thy mysteries to our ken, Striking a marble window through blind space. But God, who mouldeth in life-plastic clay, Flashing his thoughts from men with living eyes, Not from still marble forms, changeless alway, Breathed forth his human self in human guise: Thou didst appear, walking unknown abroad, The son of man, the human, subject God. II. "There, Buonarotti, stands thy statue. Take Possession of the form; inherit it; Go forth upon the earth in likeness fit; As with a trumpet-cry at morning, wake The sleeping nations; with light's terror, shake The slumber from their hearts; and, where they sit, Let them leap up aghast, as at a pit Agape beneath." I hear him answer make: "Alas! I dare not; I could not inform That image; I revered as I did trace; I will not dim the glory of its grace, Nor with a feeble spirit mock the enorm Strength on its brow." Thou cam'st, God's thought thy form, Living the large significance of thy face. III. Some men I have beheld with wonderment, Noble in form and feature, God's design, In whom the thought must search, as in a mine, For that live soul of theirs, by which they went Thus walking on the earth. And I have bent Frequent regard on women, who gave sign That God willed Beauty, when He drew the line That shaped each float and fold of Beauty's tent; But the soul, drawing up in little space, Thus left the form all staring, self-dismayed, A vacant sign of what might be the grace If mind swelled up, and filled the plan displayed: Each curve and shade of thy pure form were Thine, Thy very hair replete with the divine. IV.