Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (18611907)255. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not
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He came, one night, to a cottage door.
He came, a poor man, to the poor;
He had no bed whereon to lie.
Standing there in the frozen blast.
The door was locked and bolted fast.
‘Only a beggar!’ the poor man said.
Until He came to a palace gate.
There a king was keeping his state,
In every window the candles shone.
He left his guests in the banquet-hall.
He bade his servants tend them all.
‘I wait on a Guest I know of old.’
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘it is Christ the Lord.’
He spoke to Him a kindly word,
He gave Him wine and he gave Him bread.
And all the words of Christ are true.
He touched the cottage, and it grew;
He touched the palace, and it fell.
Never was man so sad as he.
Sorrow and Sin on the throne make three,
He has no joy in mortal thing.
That stands where once the palace stood.
And the workman, toiling to earn his food,
Was never a king before.