hall bear my spirit to the sun,
And cursed the hand that stays its homeward flight!"

Fresh nerved he reached the altar with a bound,
And sank without a murmur in the flame;
His followers an instant gather round,
But he had passed out almost as he came.

They did not dare to drag him from the pile,
His life and effort had together ceased,
He passed into the future with a smile--
A smile, that he had been so quick released.
Yet, there was one (clear-sighted from the rest),
Who said she saw the essence of his form,
In brighter effigy, more richly dressed,
Fly out into the sunset; and the charm
Of her enchanted parable found faith
In many of the multitude; his death,
So like his life, had challenged all their thought
And they were ready to quiesce his fate, and sought
Some shadowed miracle to wrap his shade.
They gathered up the ashes, and forbade
Unsanctioned hands to touch them; and they reared
A rugged mound above the garnered dust,
And left him (one whom they loved less than feared).
To that sole arbiter, whose name is Just,
Our common parent, Time, whose busy hands
Rear many a sacred fane above our faults,
Flings over our excressences his sands,
And leaves no human stain to blot the sacred marble of
our vaults.

How grand is the economy of time and death!
We whet the knife for deep incision on the name
Of some misguided leader, but he fails his breath,
And all our better angels give him back to fame;
Death carries off the husk, we keep the ripened wheat,
And Time refines the kernel into choicest flour;
The atmosphere of anger is at last made sweet;
Our charity immortal glows; our passion, but an hour.
God keep us always so! It is the chosen link
That binds us to the race, and bids the Christ come in;
That holds our hands to near the eternal brink;
It saves us from ourselves, and breaks the tooth of sin.

The whitened garments at the eternal gate,
Must cover those, who have not stained another,
Or there will come that awful sentence: "Wait!