In two hours He will come, they say, will stand There on the steps, above the waiting crowd, And touch with healing hands whoever asks Believingly, in spirit and in truth. Can such a mercy be, in these hard days? Is help still sent in such a way as that? Christ, I believe; pity my unbelief! JETSAM I wonder can this be the world it was At sunset? I remember the sky fell Green as pale meadows, at the long street-ends, But overhead the smoke-wrack hugged the roofs As if to shut the city from God's eyes Till dawn should quench the laughter and the lights. Beneath the gas flare stolid faces passed, Too dull for sin; old loosened lips set hard To drain the stale lees from the cup of sense; Or if a young face yearned from out the mist Made by its own bright hair, the eyes were wan With desolate fore-knowledge of the end. My life lay waste about me: as I walked, From the gross dark of unfrequented streets The face of my own youth peered forth at me, Struck white with pity at the thing I was; And globed in ghostly fire, thrice-virginal, With lifted face star-strong, went one who sang Lost verses from my youth's gold canticle. Out of the void dark came my face and hers One vivid moment--then the street was there; Bloat shapes and mean eyes blotted the sear dusk; And in the curtained window of a house Whence sin reeked on the night, a shameful head Was silhouetted black as Satan's face Against eternal fires. I stumbled on Down the dark slope that reaches riverward, Stretching blind hands to find the throat of God And crush Him in his lies. The river lay Coiled in its factory filth and few lean trees. All was too hateful--I could not die there! I whom the Spring had strained unto her breast, Whose lips had felt the wet vague lips of dawn. So under the thin willows' leprous shade And through the tangled ranks of riverweed I pushed--till lo, God heard me! I came forth Where, 'neath the shoreless hush of region light, Through a new world, undreamed of, undesired, Beyond imagining of man's weary heart, Far to the white marge of the wondering sea This still plain widens, and this moon rains down Insufferable ecstasy of peace.