Where, O glorious God? In what land of the heathen--and I know them all, From China to Peru, from Hind to Senegal, And onward through the isles of the great Southern main. Where is this miracle? Nay, nay, the search were vain. THE LORD GOD It is the angels' hearsay. SATAN A romance, Lord. Hear The word of one Thy wanderer, sphere and hemisphere, For ever on Thy Earth, who shepherding Thy seas No less than Thy green valleys hath nor rest nor peace, But he must learn the way of all who in them dwell; To whom there is no secret, naught untold, no hell Where any sin may hide but he hath wormed it out From silence to confession till his ears grew hot; Who knoweth the race of Man as his own flesh; whose eye Is cruel to evasion and the lips that lie, And who would tell Thee all, all, all to the last act Of tragic fooling proved which seals Man's counterpact. --What was the true tale, think Thee, of Thy Son that died? What of the souls that knew Him, Him the crucified, After their Lord was gone? They waited for Him long, The sick He had made whole, the wronged consoled of wrong, The women He had loved, the fisher folk whose ears Had drunk in His word's wisdom those three wondrous years, And deemed Him prophet, prince, His kingdom yet to come, Nay from the grave new-risen and had been seen of some. What did they teach? Awhile, they told His law of peace, His rule of unresistance and sweet guilelessness, His truce with mother Earth, His abstinence from toil, His love of the least life that wanton hands despoil, The glory of His tears, His watching, fasting, prayer, The patience of His death, His last word of despair. And as He lived they lived--awhile--expectant still Of His return in power to balance the Earth's ill. They would not deem Him dead. But, when He came not, lo, Their reason went astray. Poor souls, they loved Him so, They had such grief for Him, their one true God in Man Revealed to their sad eyes in all a World grown wan, That they must build a creed, a refuge from their fears In His remembered words and so assuage their tears. His kingdom? It was what? Not all a dream? Forbid That fault, that failure, Heaven, for such were death indeed. His promises of peace, goodwill on earth to men, Which needed a fulfilment, lest faith fail? How then Since no fulfilment came, since He had left them lone In face of the world's wolves, for bread had given a stone? How reconcile His word with that which was their life, Man's hatred and God's silence in a world of strife? Was there no path, no way? Nay, none on this sad Earth Save with their Lord to suffer and account it mirth. And so awhile they grieved. Then rose a subtlety-- Lord God, Thou knowest not wholly how men crave to lie In face of a hard truth too grievous to their pride-- To these poor fisher folk, thus of their Lord denied,