Jephthah and Other Mysteries

xx PRELUDE. _Completing Truth in its amazing span :— “ Godhead is made the Spirit that is Man.” To whose white mountains, and their arduous ways, Turn we our purpose, till the faith that slays Yield up its place to faith that gives us life, The faith to conquer in the higher strife ; Our single purpose, and sublime intent, With their spilt blood to seal our sacrament, Who stand among the martyrs of the Light; Our single purpose, by incarnate might Begotten after travail unto death, To live within the light that quickeneth ; To tread base thoughts as our high thoughts have trod, Deep in the dust, the carrion that was God ; Conquer our hatreds as the dawn of love Conquered that fiend whose ruinous throne above Broke lofty spirits once, now falls with Fate, At last through his own violence violate; To live in life, breathe freedom with each breath, As God breathed tyranny and died in death ; Secure the sacred fastness of the soul, Uniting self to the absolute, the whole, The universal marriage of mankind, Free, perfect, broken from the chains that bind, Force infinite, love pure, desire untold, And mutual raptures of the age of gold, The child of freedom! So the moulder, man, Shakes his grim shoulders, and the shadows wan Fall to forgetfulness ; so life revives, And new sweet loves beget diviner lives,