And yet I fear lest men who read these lines, Should judge of them as if they wholly spake The love I bear Thee and thy holy sake; Saying: "He doth the high name wrong who twines Earth's highest aim with Him, and thus combines Jesus and Art." But I my refuge make In what the Word said: "Man his life shall take From every word:" in Art God first designs,-- He spoke the word. And let me humbly speak My faith, that Art is nothing to the act, Lowliest, that to the Truth bears witness meek, Renownless, even unknown, but yet a fact: The glory of thy childhood and thy youth, Was not that Thou didst show, but didst the Truth. XVII The highest marble Sorrow vanishes Before a weeping child.[2] The one doth seem, The other is. And wherefore do we dream, But that we live? So I rejoice in this, That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the bliss Of conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream, (Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem) Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss. Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lie Mean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity; Full well I know that if they were as high In holy song as prophet's ecstasy, 'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me! Speak gently to a child for love of Thee. [Footnote 2: John Sterling.] XVIII. Thou art before me, and I see no more Pilate or soldiers, but the purple flung Around the naked form the scourge had wrung, To naked Truth thus witnessing, before The False and trembling True. As on the shore Of infinite Love and Truth, I kneel among Thy footprints on that pavement; and my tongue Would, but for reverence, cry: "If Thou set'st store By feeble homage, Witness to the Truth, Thou art the King, crowned by thy witnessing!" I die in soul, and fall down worshipping. Art glories vanish, vapours of the morn. Never but Thee was there a man in sooth, Never a true crown but thy crown of thorn. DEATH AND BIRTH. A Symbol. [Sidenote: _He looks from his window on the midnight town._] 'Tis the midnight hour; I heard The city clocks give out the word. Seldom are the lamp-rays shed On the quick foot-farer's head, As I sit at my window old, Looking out into the cold, Down along the narrowing street Stretching out below my feet, From base of this primeval block, My old home's foundation rock. [Sidenote: _He renounces Beauty the body for Truth the soul_.]