# Songs before Sunrise (Swinburne)/Before a Crucifix

BEFORE A CRUCIFIX.
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 branded black, the rains Striped grey this piteous God of theirs; The face is full of prayers and pains, To which they bring their pains and prayers; Lean limbs that shew the labouring bones, And ghastly mouth that gapes and groans.
God of this grievous people, wrought After the likeness of their race, By faces like thine own besought, Thine own blind helpless eyeless face, I too, that have nor tongue nor knee For prayer, I have a word to thee.
It was for this then, that thy speech Was blown about the world in flame And men's souls shot up out of reach Of fear or lust or thwarting shame— That thy faith over souls should pass As sea-winds burning the grey grass?
It was for this, that prayers like these Should spend themselves about thy feet, And with hard overlaboured knees Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat Bosoms too lean to suckle sons And fruitless as their orisons?
It was for this, that men should make Thy name a fetter on men's necks, Poor men's made poorer for thy sake, And women's withered out of sex? It was for this, that slaves should be, Thy word was passed to set men free?
The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls Now deathward since thy death and birth. Hast thou fed full men's starved-out souls? Hast thou brought freedom upon earth? Or are there less oppressions done In this wild world under the sun?
Nay, if indeed thou be not dead, Before thy terrene shrine be shaken, Look down, turn usward, bow thine head; O thou that wast of God forsaken, Look on thine household here, and see These that have not forsaken thee.
Thy faith is fire upon their lips, Thy kingdom golden in their hands; They scourge us with thy words for whips, They brand us with thy words for brands; The thirst that made thy dry throat shrink To their moist mouths commends the drink.
The toothed thorns that bit thy brows Lighten the weight of gold on theirs; Thy nakedness enrobes thy spouse With the soft sanguine stuff she wears Whose old limbs use for ointment yet Thine agony and bloody sweat.
The blinding buffets on thine head On their crowned heads confirm the crown; Thy scourging dyes their raiment red, And with thy bands they fasten down For burial in the blood-bought field The nations by thy stripes unhealed.
With iron for thy linen bands And unclean cloths for winding-sheet They bind the people's nail-pierced hands, They hide the people's nail-pierced feet; And what man or what angel known Shall roll back the sepulchral stone?
But these have not the rich man's grave To sleep in when their pain is done. These were not fit for God to save. As naked hell-fire is the sun In their eyes living, and when dead These have not where to lay their head.
They have no tomb to dig, and hide; Earth is not theirs, that they should sleep. On all these tombless crucified No lovers' eyes have time to weep. So still, for all man's tears and creeds, The sacred body hangs and bleeds.
Through the left hand a nail is driven, Faith, and another through the right, Forged in the fires of hell and heaven, Fear that puts out the eye of light: And the feet soiled and scarred and pale Are pierced with falsehood for a nail.
And priests against the mouth divine Push their sponge full of poison yet And bitter blood for myrrh and wine, And on the same reed is it set Wherewith before they buffeted The people's disanointed head.
O sacred head, O desecrate, O labour-wounded feet and hands, O blood poured forth in pledge to fate Of nameless lives in divers lands, O slain and spent and sacrificed People, the grey-grown speechless Christ!
Is there a gospel in the red Old witness of thy wide-mouthed wounds? From thy blind stricken tongueless head What desolate evangel sounds A hopeless note of hope deferred? What word, if there be any word?
O son of man, beneath man's feet Cast down, O common face of man Whereon all blows and buffets meet, O royal, O republican Face of the people bruised and dumb And longing till thy kingdom come!
The soldiers and the high priests part Thy vesture: all thy days are priced, And all the nights that eat thine heart. And that one seamless coat of Christ, The freedom of the natural soul, They cast their lots for to keep whole.
No fragment of it save the name They leave thee for a crown of scorns Wherewith to mock thy naked shame And forehead bitten through with thorns And, marked with sanguine sweat and tears, The stripes of eighteen hundred years
And we seek yet if God or man Can loosen thee as Lazarus, Bid thee rise up republican And save thyself and all of us; But no disciple's tongue can say When thou shalt take our sins away.
And mouldering now and hoar with moss Between us and the sunlight swings The phantom of a Christless cross Shadowing the sheltered heads of kings And making with its moving shade The souls of harmless men afraid.
It creaks and rocks to left and right, Consumed of rottenness and rust, Worm-eaten of the worms of night, Dead as their spirits who put trust, Round its base muttering as they sit, In the time-cankered name of it.
Thou, in the day that breaks thy prison, People, though these men take thy name, And hail and hymn thee rearisen, Who made songs erewhile of thy shame, Give thou not ear; for these are they Whose good day was thine evil day.
Set not thine hand unto their cross. Give not thy soul up sacrificed. Change not the gold of faith for dross Of Christian creeds that spit on Christ. Let not thy tree of freedom be Regrafted from that rotting tree.
This dead God here against my face Hath help for no man; who hath seen The good works of it, or such grace As thy grace in it, Nazarene, As that from thy live lips which ran For man's sake, O thou son of man?
The tree of faith ingraffed by priests Puts its foul foliage out above thee, And round it feed man-eating beasts Because of whom we dare not love thee; Though hearts reach back and memories ache, We cannot praise thee for their sake.
O hidden face of man, whereover The years have woven a viewless veil, If thou wast verily man's lover, What did thy love or blood avail? Thy blood the priests make poison of, And in gold shekels coin thy love.
So when our souls look back to thee They sicken, seeing against thy side, Too foul to speak of or to see, The leprous likeness of a bride, Whose kissing lips through his lips grown Leave their God rotten to the bone.
When we would see thee man, and know What heart thou hadst toward men indeed, Lo, thy blood-blackened altars; lo, The lips of priests that pray and feed While their own hell's worm curls and licks The poison of the crucifix.
Thou bad'st let children come to thee; What children now but curses come? What manhood in that God can be Who sees their worship, and is dumb? No soul that lived, loved, wrought, and died, Is this their carrion crucified.
Nay, if their God and thou be one, If thou and this thing be the same, Thou shouldst not look upon the sun; The sun grows haggard at thy name. Come down, be done with, cease, give o'er; Hide thyself, strive not, be no more.