Or, if his face be burnished with a flame
Too great for our uncovered eyes, then we
Are satisfied to close them in the smile
Of one so radiant; so we feel him near,
"But we must know his presence for the while;
Speak Kohen! why can ye not bring him here?"

Then answered Kohen: "Urge me not, O King!
Ye know not what ye ask, if ye do seek
To see him as he is. A nameless thing,
A brow-bedabbled man, upon whose cheek,
Sheds everyday God's sunshine; shall he ask
That a decree be broken, and presume
To lift unhallowed voice? Though in a mask
Jehovah hides his presence, yet, the bloom
Of every flower, is but the blush he brings
Upon the face of nature, as he looks
Abroad upon his creatures; and she sings
From her ten thousand voices in his praise.
Wake to his chorus! 'Ancient of the Days,'
Wake children! and your faith shall blossom into wings."

"Prate ye to fools," the incensed Monarch cries,
"Nor gabble longer of your hidden Lord;
Who follows in his wake, this moment dies,
And Isis and eternal keep my word.
We have a score of hidden deities
And yet, they leave us, without aid or thought,
And pestilence comes in and blocks our ways
And where can our dilverance be bought?
Show the bare hand of infinite decree,
Show us a present help in each distress,
Show us the Master, we will bend the knee,
"And we will follow on, in righteousness.
Strike! strike the chords! while we invoke the gods,
And with the music let our souls be blended,
That we may find the one, before whom nods
'All stripling deities, and thus our strife be ended.'"
Then rose a blast of sound upon the air
And blended with it was the voice of song,
The chime of music with the moan of prayer—
A nation's thirst; deep, earnest and impassionately strong:

O God of gods! be with us when we pray,
And give us rest;
List our entreaty, be not far away,
Be near each breast.

The gods of Mizraim, we have sought in vain,—
They answer not;
Our prayers are but an empty, aching pain,—
We are forgot.

Though Isis bless our fields and flocks with growth,
And Thoth be heard;
Upon the tongues of wisemen, yet, is wroth
Some mighty lord.

Some hidden power without us; in the dark
We grope our way;
From thine own glory, lend to us a spark,
Be thou our day.

O, make thee to be known,
From thy unchanging throne,
God of the trusting heart;
Come take us by the hand,
And be our sole command,
And form with us a part.

Give us, to look upon
Thy form without a frown,
Our doubts and fears displace;
God of the universe,
Remove from us, thy curse,
Give us to see thy face.

"Behold! behold, his face!"
A hand is pointed to the sun;
"Behold! and be ye not afraid,
To-day, be life, once more begun;
Look ye upon his face, and learn to live,
Look ye upon his face and learn to die;
His hand alone deliverance can give,
His light, alone, can frame the soul's reply.
'Hear me! ye sons of men'; all eyes were turned;
A stranger in their midst, whose dark eye burned
With an unearthly gleam, yet black as night.
It had no heavenly radiance, yet, was bright
With a mysterious blaze, that pierced the soul
As with an arrow to its inmost part,
His form, in keeping with his face, made whole

"A man well fitted to command; a heart
That seemed to throb with some great passion; pent
And seething into purpose; his black face
Shone like a mirror-hood of his design.
His words, and his strange presence in the place
Gave him enraptured audience, that no one dared decline.

"Hear me, ye sons of men: I am not come
To woe ye to destruction; but, to save;
The color of my face betrays my birth,
I am Mizraim's race; but of mankind
A brother, and I speak in soberness.
Because our fathers wandered from the way,
And left the shining pathway of the sun,
Because they fell to seeking other gods,
He suffered them to fall into your hands.
I will not speak, as he has feigned to speak,
Who claimed before me, sponsorship from God;
But I will make it plain that he deceived.
Our fathers tell of Noah and the ark,
And also tell of Shinar, and the time
Of the dispersal. It is not enough
To come with empty declamation, come
With platitudes of love, and softened terms
Of parenthood, and then to dash it all—
The yearning love of children, to the earth,
By words that are icicled up from death:
'Ask not to look upon my face again,
Ye cannot look and live.'

"Shame! shame on the pretender thus to bring
Your expectations to the pitch of pain,
The summit of your hope, where, to move on
Is only to descent and sorrow; thus
To multiply his attributes of good,
And to describe a god so like the true,
The ever shining Sun, and then deny
The precious boon of sight; what mockery!
When there he stands, (eternity, as young,)
The broad, full shining orb, to look upon;
The ever radiant Arbiter of earth,
The great 'I am' of love; the very soul
Of tenderness; rising every morn
To kiss his sleeping children from their beds,
Enwrapping them, with all his piercing warmth;
Wooing the fragrant flowers from the earth,
And warming all existences to life.

"How can the soul be blind, when such a pledge
Stands in eternal witness of its love?
The very rocks would break their raptured trance,
If man find not his voice in fervent praise.
How do the waters mirror up his face!
And tremble into waves at his advance.
The universe goes laughing into life
Each morn at his approach, and all the world
Forgets its wakefulness, when the tired wing
Of day is folded, and himself withdraws

"To teach us faith in him till he return;
Thus every night his promise, and each morn
His gracious fulfillment, filling the year
With ripened sheaves of his remembrances.

"We measure power by our necessities;
Let him forget the dawning of one day,
Or leave us through the circle of one moon,
(Which were the same to him but for his love,)
By what conception would we feel our loss?
While yet the year is young, we scatter seed,
And wait his fervid rays to fructify.
The trees put forth their bloom, that his embrace
May ripen into fruit; and not a growth
But climbs his rays to full development.
When Nature points with her ten thousand hands
To him, the almighty framer of it all,
Shall man forget his duty and fly off
On the unnumbered tangents of the brain?