And grieves to quit it limb by limb: fixt time
135 Death lords it o’er the unhappy flesh; that so
From light dust it may be renewed, and death
Unfriendly fail at length, when flesh, released,
Rises again. This will that victory be
Supreme and long expected, wrought by Him,
140 The aye-to-be-revered, who did become
True man; and by His Father’s virtue won:
Who man’s redeemed limbs unto the heavens
Hath raised, and richly opened access up
Thither in hope, first to His nation; then
145 To those among all tongues in whom His work
Is ever doing: Minister imbued
With His Sire’s parent-care, seen by the eye
Of the Illimitable, He performed,
By suffering, His missions.
What say now
150 The impious voices? what th’ abandoned crew?
If He Himself, God the Creator’s self,
Gave not the Law, He who from Egypt’s vale
Paved in the waves a path, and freely gave
The seats which He had said of old, why comes
155 He in that very People and that land
Aforesaid? and why rather sought He not
Some other peoples or some rival realms?
Why, further, did He teach that, through the seers,
(With Name foretold in full, yet not His own,)
160 He had been often sung of? Whence, again,
Could He have issued baptism’s kindly gifts,
Promised by some one else, as His own works?
These gifts men who God’s mandates had transgressed,
And hence were found polluted, longed for,
165 And begged a pardoning rescue from fierce death.
Expected long, they came: but that to those
Who recognised them when erst heard, and now
Have recognised them, when in due time found,
Christ’s true hand is to give them, this, with voice
170 Paternal, the Creator-Sire Himself
Warns ever from eternity, and claims;
And thus the work of virtue which He framed,
And still frames, arms, and fosters, and doth now
Victorious look down on and reclothe
175 With His own light, should with perennial praise
Abide.
What hath the Living Power done