The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-06-14
o gracious city, well beloved,

Burn from her beautiful strange face,
As in the ssnguine, sacred place
Where In pure hands she took the head
Severed, and with pure lips, still red,
Kissed the lips dead.
For years through, sweetest of the saints,
In quiet without cease she wrought
Till cries Of men and fierce complaints
From outward moved her maiden thought;
And prayers she heard and signs toward France
"God, send US back deliverance-
Send back Thy servant, lest we die!n
With an exceeding bitter cry
Then sm0te the sky.
Then in her sacred, saving hands
She took the sorrows of the lands.
With maiden palms she lifted up
The sick times odembittered cup,
And in her virgin garment furled
The faint limbs Of wounded world.
Clothed with calm love and clear desire,
She went forth, in her souls attire,
mssiVe fire.
VII.
Across the might of men that strove
1t shone, and over heads of kings;
And molten in red flames Of love
Were swords and many monstrous things;
And shields were lowered, and snapt were spears
And sweeter. tuned the clsmOrous years;
And faith came back and peace that were
Fled for she babe, saying, Thou, Gods heir,
Hast thou no care
10, men ley waste thine heritage
Still, and much heather people rage
Against thee, and desire vain things.
What comfort in the face Of kings,
What counsel is there? Turn thine eyes
And thine heart from them in likewise
Turn thee unto thine holy place,
To help us that of God for grace
Require thy face.
/" For who shall hear US, if not thou,
In strange land? What doest thou there!
gha ad and tha MI 0harfa ,Ta ~
Upon us; why hast thou no care
For all this, and beyond strange hills
LEST unregardful what snow chills
Thy fOldless flock, or what rains beat?
10, in thine ears before thy feet,
Thy lost sheep bleat.
"And strange men feed on fautless lives,
And there is blood and men put knives,
Shepherd, unto the young lambs throat;
And one hath eaten, and one smote
And one had hunger and is fed
Full Of the flesh Of these, and red
With blood Of those, as who drinks wine;
And God knoweth, who hath sent thee sign,
II these were thine"
But the pope's heart within him burned,
So that he rose mp. seeing the sign,
And came among them; but she TUNED
Back to her daily way divine,
And fed her faith with silent things,
And lived her life with curbed white wings,
And mixed herself with heaven and died,
And now on the sheer clty-sde
Smiles like bride.
You see her in the fresh clear gloom,
Where walls shut out the flame and bloom
OF full breathed summer, and the roof
Keeps the keen ardent air aloof
And sweet weight Of the violet sky.
There, bodily beheld on high,
She seems as one, hearing in tune
Heaven within heaven, and heavens full noon
In sacred swoon-
solemn swoon Of sense that aches
With imminent blind heat Of heaven,
While sll the wide-eyed spirit wakes,
NigilaDt of the supreme seven,
Whose coral flames in Gods sight move,
Made uncomfortable with love
That, without wind or blast OF breath
Compels all things through life and death
Whittier God saith.
Nv.
There on the dim side.chapel wall
Thy mighty touch memorial,
RazZi, raised up, for ages dead,
And fixed for US her heavenly head;
And, rent with plated thorn and rod
Barred the live likeness Of her God
To mems eyes, turning from strange lands
Where, pale from thine immortal hands,
Christ wounded stands;
XVI.
And the blood biots his holy hair
And white bTows. over hungering eyes
That plead against us, and the fair
Mute lips, forlorn Of words and signs,
In the great torment that bends down
His bruised head with the bloomless crown,
White as the unfruidul thorn over
A God beheld in dreams that were
Beheld OF her.
XVII.
In vain on ell these sins and years
Falls the sad blood, falls the slow tears;
In vain, poured forth water springs,
Priests, on your affairs, and, ye kings,
About your seats Of ssnguine gold;
Still your god, spst upon and sold
Bleeds 81 your hands; but now is gone
All his flock from him save one,
Judas alone.
XVIII.
Surely your race ii was that he,
o men, signed backward with his name,
BehOlding in Gethsemane;
Bled the red bitter sweat Of shame,
knowing how the word OF Christian should
Mean to men evil and not good,
Seem to men shameful for your sake
Whose lips, for all the prayers they make,
Mans blood must slake.
XIX.
But blood nor tears ye love not, you
That my love leads my longing to,
Fair as the worlds old faith of flowers,
o golden goddesses Of ours
From what italian rose pleasance
Hath Aphrodite hidden glance
The loyeler lightnings of your feet?
From what sweet Paphian sward or seat
Led you more sweet!
Xxx.
o white three sisters. three ss one,
4 With iower.like arms for fOFery bands,
Your linked limbs glitter like the sun,
And Time lies beaten at your hands,
Time and wild years and wars and men
Pass, and We care not whence or when;
With calm lips, oversweet for soorn,
Ye watch night pass, o children born
or te oldworld morn.