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[317] Do I smell your gums of incense?
Is my ear with chantings fed?
Taste I your wine of worship,
Or eat your holy bread?
Of rank and name and honors
Am I vain as ye are vain?
What can Eternal Fulness
From your lip-service gain?
Ye make me not your debtor
Who serve yourselves alone;
Ye boast to me of homage
Whose gain is all your own.
For you I gave the prophets,
For you the Psalmist's lay:
For you the law's stone tables,
And holy book and day.
Ye change to weary burdens
The helps that should uplift;
Ye lose in form the spirit,
The Giver in the gift.
Who called ye to self-torment,
To fast and penance vain?
Dream ye Eternal Goodness
Has joy in mortal pain?
For the death in life of Nitria,
For your Chartreuse ever dumb,
What better is the neighbor,
Or happier the home?
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
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