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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=420702" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Gallows</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.<br>THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone<br>Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made<br>The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,<br>And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;<br>And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,<br>And broke with publicans the bread of shame,<br>And drank with blessings, in His Father's name,<br>The water which Samaria's outcast drew,<br>Hath now His temples upon every shore,<br>Altar and shrine and priest; and incense dim<br>Evermore rising, with low prayer and hymn,<br>From lips which press the temple's marble floor,<br>Or kiss the gilded sign of the dread cross He bore.<br>II.<br>Yet as of old, when, meekly 'doing good,'<br>He fed a blind and selfish multitude,<br>And even the poor companions of His lot<br>With their dim earthly vision knew Him not,<br>How ill are His high teachings understood!<br>Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest<br>At His own altar binds the chain anew;<br>Where He hath bidden to Life's equal feast,<br>The starving many wait upon the few;<br>Where He hath spoken Peace, His name hath been<br>The loudest war-cry of contending men;<br>Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed<br>The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest,<br>Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine,<br>And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;<br>Yea, in His name who bade the erring live,<br>And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!<br>Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;<br>And, with His words of mercy on their lips,<br>Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning grips,<br>And the grim horror of the straining wheel;<br>Fed the slow flame which gnawed the victim's limb,<br>Who saw before his searing eyeballs swim<br>The image of their Christ in cruel zeal,<br>Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!<br>III.<br>The blood which mingled with the desert sand,<br>And beaded with its red and ghastly dew<br>The vines and olives of the Holy Land;<br>The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;<br>The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er<br>They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear;<br>Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell,<br>Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung<br>Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,<br>Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell!<br>The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake<br>Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame<br>Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake;<br>New England's scaffold, and the priestly sneer<br>Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear,<br>When guilt itself a human tear might claim, —<br>Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!<br>That Earth's most hateful crimes have in Thy name been done!<br>IV.<br>Thank God! that I have lived to see the time<br>When the great truth begins at last to find<br>An utterance from the deep heart of mankind,<br>Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,<br>That man is holier than a creed, that all<br>Restraint upon him must consult his good,<br>Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall,<br>And Love look in upon his solitude.<br>The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught<br>Through long, dark centuries its way hath wrought<br>Into the common mind and popular thought;<br>And words, to which by Galilee's lake shore<br>The humble fishers listened with hushed oar,<br>Have found an echo in the general heart,<br>And of the public faith become a living part.<br>V.<br>Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring back<br>The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack?<br>Harden the softening human heart again<br>To cold indifference to a brother's pain?<br>Ye most unhappy men! who, turned away<br>From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,<br>Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight time,<br>What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest ye brood,<br>O'er those foul altars streaming with warm blood,<br>Permitted in another age and clime?<br>Why cite that law with which the bigot Jew<br>Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knew<br>No evil in the Just One? Wherefore turn<br>To the dark, cruel past? Can ye not learn<br>From the pure Teacher's life how mildly free<br>Is the great Gospel of Humanity?<br>The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no more<br>Mexitli's altars soak with human gore,<br>No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke<br>Through the green arches of the Druid's oak;<br>And ye of milder faith, with your high claim.<br>Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest name,<br>Will ye become the Druids of our time!<br>Set up your scaffold-altars in our land,<br>And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime,<br>Urge to its loathsome work the hangman's hand?<br>Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,<br>From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,<br>And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,<br>Rank ye with those who led their victims round<br>The Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound,<br>Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Greenleaf+Whittier">John Greenleaf Whittier</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=420702" data-title="The Gallows de John Greenleaf Whittier" data-description="I.
THE suns of eighteen centuries have shone
Since the Redeemer walked with man, and made
The fisher's boat, the cavern's floor of stone,
And mountain moss, a pillow for His head;
And He, who wandered with the peasant Jew,
And broke with publicans..."></div>
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