John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Religious PoemsThe Star of Bethlehem
W
By changeful bud and blossom keeps,
And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,
Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps;
The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,
Less sweet than those his thoughts have sown
In the warm soil of Persian hearts:
Of scattered date-trees thinly lay,
While in the hot clear heaven delayed
The long and still and weary day.
Strange odors filled the sultry air,
Strange birds upon the branches swung,
Strange insect voices murmured there.
Turned sunward from the shadowy bowers,
As if the Gheber’s soul had found
A fitting home in Iran’s flowers.
Awakened feelings new and sad,—
No Christian garb, nor Christian word,
Nor church with Sabbath-bell chimes glad,
And mosque-spires gleaming white, in view,
And graybeard Mollahs in low tones
Chanting their Koran service through.
Like tempting fiends, were such as they
Which once, o’er all that Eastern land,
As gifts on demon altars lay.
The servant of his Conqueror knew,
From skies which knew no cloudy veil,
The Sun’s hot glances smote him through.
“The hope which led my footsteps on,
And light from heaven around them shed,
O’er weary wave and waste, is gone!
For Truth to thrust her sickle in?
Where flock the souls, like doves in flight,
From the dark hiding-place of sin?
The burden of a hateful spell,—
The very flowers around recall
The hoary magi’s rites of hell!
The banner of the Cross to bear?
Dear Lord, uphold me with Thy hand,
Thy strength with human weakness share!”
In mild rebuke a floweret smiled;
How thrilled his sinking heart to greet
The Star-flower of the Virgin’s child!
Its life from alien air and earth,
And told to Paynim sun and dew
The story of the Saviour’s birth.
The Persian plants its beauty screened,
And on its pagan sisterhood,
In love, the Christian floweret leaned.
The darkness of his long despair
Before that hallowed symbol melt,
Which God’s dear love had nurtured there.
The lines of sin and sadness swept;
And Magian pile and Paynim bower
In peace like that of Eden slept.
Looked holy through the sunset air;
And, angel-like, the Muezzin told
From tower and mosque the hour of prayer.
From Shiraz saw the stranger part;
The Star-flower of the Virgin-Born
Still blooming in his hopeful heart!