AN eye with the piercing eagle’s fire, | |
| Not the look of the gentle dove; | |
| Not his the form that men admire, | |
| Nor the face that tender women love. | |
| |
| Working first for his daily bread | 5 |
| With the humblest toilers of the earth; | |
| Never walking with free, proud tread— | |
| Crippled and halting from his birth. | |
| |
| Wearing outside a thorny suit | |
| Of sharp, sarcastic, stinging power; | 10 |
| Sweet at the core as sweetest fruit, | |
| Or inmost heart of fragrant flower. | |
| |
| Fierce and trenchant, the haughty foe | |
| Felt his words like a sword of flame; | |
| But to the humble, poor, and low | 15 |
| Soft as a woman’s his accents came. | |
| |
| Not his the closest, tenderest friend— | |
| No children blessed his lonely way; | |
| But down in his heart until the end | |
| The tender dream of his boyhood lay. | 20 |
| |
| His mother’s faith he held not fast; | |
| But he loved her living, mourned her dead, | |
| And he kept her memory to the last | |
| As green as the sod above her bed. | |
| |
| He held as sacred in his home | 25 |
| Whatever things she wrought or planned, | |
| And never suffered change to come | |
| To the work of her “industrious hand.” | |
| |
| For her who pillowed first his head | |
| He heaped with a wealth of flowers the grave, | 30 |
| While he chose to sleep in an unmarked bed, | |
| By his Master’s humblest poor—the slave! | |
| |
| Suppose he swerved from the straightest course— | |
| That the things he should not do he did— | |
| That he hid from the eyes of mortals, close, | 35 |
| Such sins as you and I have hid? | |
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| Or suppose him worse that you; what then? | |
| Judge not, lest you be judged for sin! | |
| One said who knew the hearts of men: | |
| Who loveth much shall a pardon win. | 40 |
| |
| The Prince of Glory for sinners bled; | |
| His soul was bought with a royal price; | |
| And his beautified feet on flowers may tread | |
| To-day with his Lord in Paradise. | |
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