To the Deists

I saw a monk of Charlemagne Arise before my sight: I talked with the grey monk as he stood In the beams of infernal light.

Gibbon arose with a lash of steel, And Voltaire with a racking wheel; The Schools, in clouds of learning rolled, Arose with War in iron and gold.

“Thou lazy monk”, they sound afar, “In vain condemning glorious war; And in your cell you shall ever dwell. Rise, War, and bind him in his cell.”

The blood ran red from the Grey Monk’s side, His hands and feet were wounded wide; His body bent, his arms and knees Like to the roots of ancient trees.

When Satan first the black bow bent, And moral law from the Gospel rent, He forged the law into a sword, And spilled the blood of mercy’s Lord.

Titus, Constantine, Charlemagne, O Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon; vain Your Grecian mocks and Roman sword Against the image of his Lord.

For a tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the sword of an angel king, And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.