the walls belated,
Entering in at the eventide:

And many met us with song and dancing,
Mantled in skins and crowned with flowers,
Waving goblets and torches glancing;
Faces drunken, that grinned in ours:

And one, that ran in the midst, came near us--
"Crown yourselves for the feast," he said,
But we cried out, that the God might hear us,
"Where is Jesus, the living bread?"

And they took us each by the hand with laughter;
Their eyes were haggard and red with wine:
They haled us on, and we followed after,
"We will show you the new God's shrine."

Ah, woe to our tongues, that, forever unsleeping,
Harp and uncover the old hot care,
The soothing ash from the embers sweeping,
Wherever the soles of our sad feet fare.

Ah, we were simple of mind, not knowing,
How dreadful the heart of a man might be;
But the knowledge of evil is mighty of growing;
Only the deaf and the blind are free.

We came to a garden of beauty and pleasure--
It was not the way that our own feet chose--
Where a revel was whirling in many a measure,
And the myriad roar of a great crowd rose;

And the midmost round of the garden was reddened
With pillars of fire in a great high ring--
One look--and our souls forever were deadened,
Though our feet yet move, and our dreams yet sting;

For we saw that each was a live man flaming,
Limbs that a human mother bore,
And a thing of horror was done, past naming,
And the crowd spun round, and we saw no more.

And he that ran in the midst, descrying,
Lifted his hand with a foul red sneer,
And smote us each and the other, crying,
"Thus we worship the new God here.

"The Caesar comes, and the people's paeans
Hail his name for the new made light,
Pitch and the flesh of the Galileans,
Torches fit for a Roman night;"

And we fell down to the earth, and sickened,
Moaning, three of us, head by head,
"Where is He, whom the good God quickened?
Where is Jesus, the living bread?"

Yet ever we heard, in the foul mirth turning,
Man and woman and child go by,
And ever the yells of the charred men burning,
Piercing heavenward, cry on cry;

And we lay there, till the frightful revel
Died in the dawn with a few short moans
Of some that knelt in the wa