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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341948" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Before A Crucifix</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here, down between the dusty trees,<br> At this lank edge of haggard wood,<br>Women with labour-loosened knees,<br> With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,<br>Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare<br>Forth with souls easier for the prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The suns have branded black, the rains<br> Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;<br>The face is full of prayers and pains,<br> To which they bring their pains and prayers;<br>Lean limbs that shew the labouring bones,<br>And ghastly mouth that gapes and groans.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">God of this grievous people, wrought<br> After the likeness of their race,<br>By faces like thine own besought,<br> Thine own blind helpless eyeless face,<br>I too, that have nor tongue nor knee<br>For prayer, I have a word to thee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was for this then, that thy speech<br> Was blown about the world in flame<br>And men's souls shot up out of reach<br> Of fear or lust or thwarting shame -<br>That thy faith over souls should pass<br>As sea-winds burning the grey grass?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was for this, that prayers like these<br> Should spend themselves about thy feet,<br>And with hard overlaboured knees<br> Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat<br>Bosoms too lean to suckle sons<br>And fruitless as their orisons?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was for this, that men should make<br> Thy name a fetter on men's necks,<br>Poor men's made poorer for thy sake,<br> And women's withered out of sex?<br>It was for this, that slaves should be,<br>Thy word was passed to set men free?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls<br> Now deathward since thy death and birth.<br>Hast thou fed full men's starved-out souls?<br> Hast thou brought freedom upon earth?<br>Or are there less oppressions done<br>In this wild world under the sun?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay, if indeed thou be not dead,<br> Before thy terrene shrine be shaken,<br>Look down, turn usward, bow thine head;<br> O thou that wast of God forsaken,<br>Look on thine household here, and see<br>These that have not forsaken thee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thy faith is fire upon their lips,<br> Thy kingdom golden in their hands;<br>They scourge us with thy words for whips,<br> They brand us with thy words for brands;<br>The thirst that made thy dry throat shrink<br>To their moist mouths commends the drink.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The toothed thorns that bit thy brows<br> Lighten the weight of gold on theirs;<br>Thy nakedness enrobes thy spouse<br> With the soft sanguine stuff she wears<br>Whose old limbs use for ointment yet<br>Thine agony and bloody sweat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The blinding buffets on thine head<br> On their crowned heads confirm the crown;<br>Thy scourging dyes their raiment red,<br> And with thy bands they fasten down<br>For burial in the blood-bought field<br>The nations by thy stripes unhealed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With iron for thy linen bands<br> And unclean cloths for winding-sheet<br>They bind the people's nail-pierced hands,<br> They hide the people's nail-pierced feet;<br>And what man or what angel known<br>Shall roll back the sepulchral stone?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But these have not the rich man's grave<br> To sleep in when their pain is done.<br>These were not fit for God to save.<br> As naked hell-fire is the sun<br>In their eyes living, and when dead<br>These have not where to lay their head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They have no tomb to dig, and hide;<br> Earth is not theirs, that they should sleep.<br>On all these tombless crucified<br> No lovers' eyes have time to weep.<br>So still, for all man's tears and creeds,<br>The sacred body hangs and bleeds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Through the left hand a nail is driven,<br> Faith, and another through the right,<br>Forged in the fires of hell and heaven,<br> Fear that puts out the eye of light:<br>And the feet soiled and scarred and pale<br>Are pierced with falsehood for a nail.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And priests against the mouth divine<br> Push their sponge full of poison yet<br>And bitter blood for myrrh and wine,<br> And on the same reed is it set<br>Wherewith before they buffeted<br>The people's disanointed head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O sacred head, O desecrate,<br> O labour-wounded feet and hands,<br>O blood poured forth in pledge to fate<br> Of nameless lives in divers lands,<br>O slain and spent and sacrificed<br>People, the grey-grown speechless Christ!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is there a gospel in the red<br> Old witness of thy wide-mouthed wounds?<br>From thy blind stricken tongueless head<br> What desolate evangel sounds<br>A hopeless note of hope deferred?<br>What word, if there be any word?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O son of man, beneath man's feet<br> Cast down, O common face of man<br>Whereon all blows and buffets meet,<br> O royal, O republican<br>Face of the people bruised and dumb<br>And longing till thy kingdom come!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The soldiers and the high priests part<br> Thy vesture: all thy days are priced,<br>And all the nights that eat thine heart.<br> And that one seamless coat of Christ,<br>The freedom of the natural soul,<br>They cast their lots for to keep whole.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No fragment of it save the name<br> They leave thee for a crown of scorns<br>Wherewith to mock thy naked shame<br> And forehead bitten through with thorns<br>And, marked with sanguine sweat and tears,<br>The stripes of eighteen hundred years</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And we seek yet if God or man<br> Can loosen thee as Lazarus,<br>Bid thee rise up republican<br> And save thyself and all of us;<br>But no disciple's tongue can say<br>When thou shalt take our sins away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And mouldering now and hoar with moss<br> Between us and the sunlight swings<br>The phantom of a Christless cross<br> Shadowing the sheltered heads of kings<br>And making with its moving shade<br>The souls of harmless men afraid.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It creaks and rocks to left and right<br> Consumed of rottenness and rust,<br>Worm-eaten of the worms of night,<br> Dead as their spirits who put trust,<br>Round its base muttering as they sit,<br>In the time-cankered name of it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou, in the day that breaks thy prison,<br> People, though these men take thy name,<br>And hail and hymn thee rearisen,<br> Who made songs erewhile of thy shame,<br>Give thou not ear; for these are they<br>Whose good day was thine evil day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Set not thine hand unto their cross.<br> Give not thy soul up sacrificed.<br>Change not the gold of faith for dross<br> Of Christian creeds that spit on Christ.<br>Let not thy tree of freedom be<br>Regrafted from that rotting tree.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This dead God here against my face<br> Hath help for no man; who hath seen<br>The good works of it, or such grace<br> As thy grace in it, Nazarene,<br>As that from thy live lips which ran<br>For man's sake, O thou son of man?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The tree of faith ingraffed by priests<br> Puts its foul foliage out above thee,<br>And round it feed man-eating beasts<br> Because of whom we dare not love thee;<br>Though hearts reach back and memories ache,<br>We cannot praise thee for their sake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O hidden face of man, whereover<br> The years have woven a viewless veil,<br>If thou wast verily man's lover,<br> What did thy love or blood avail?<br>Thy blood the priests make poison of,<br>And in gold shekels coin thy love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So when our souls look back to thee<br> They sicken, seeing against thy side,<br>Too foul to speak of or to see,<br> The leprous likeness of a bride,<br>Whose kissing lips through his lips grown<br>Leave their God rotten to the bone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When we would see thee man, and know<br> What heart thou hadst toward men indeed,<br>Lo, thy blood-blackened altars; lo,<br> The lips of priests that pray and feed<br>While their own hell's worm curls and licks<br>The poison of the crucifix.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou bad'st let children come to thee;<br> What children now but curses come?<br>What manhood in that God can be<br> Who sees their worship, and is dumb?<br>No soul that lived, loved, wrought, and died,<br>Is this their carrion crucified.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nay, if their God and thou be one,<br> If thou and this thing be the same,<br>Thou shouldst not look upon the sun;<br> The sun grows haggard at thy name.<br>Come down, be done with, cease, give o'er;<br>Hide thyself, strive not, be no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Algernon+Charles+Swinburne">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341948" data-title="Before A Crucifix de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="Here, down between the dusty trees,
 At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
 With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have bran..."></div>
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