Paternity Sacred

Father and Mother—man fulfilled in one,
By a new bond of three-fold union;
To drink that holiest sacrament of love
Worthily is most worthy, and above
          All common sanctities;
          For in that deed ye kiss
The golden rim of the great Marriage-bowl
Of God the two-fold—God the three in one—
Father, and Mother, and eternal Son
          Which is the Creature Soul!
Who takes that awful cup unworthily,
   Drinks condemnation; for on lips profane
   The holy grail sheds poison like a rain
Of quick fire in Gehenna; and the three,
   Father, and mother, and child, through clinging pain
Alone, shall climb to perfect victory,
And the calm heaven of birthright purity.

It is a fearful and a blessed thing
   Rightly to earn, and worthily to wear,
   The crown of Mother, jeweled with the rare,
Immortal gems to fit its golden ring
Thrice purified in fiery suffering.
The solemn joy, that runs too deep and still
   To ripple into smiles; the unspeakable hope
That trembles of to fear, in the low trill
Of its own breath; the tender dreams that fill
   Long days of silence, as the slow moons grope
Lightward through all their blinded cycles, till
   They bring the Hour, with awful pangs that ope
Unfathomed founts of blessedness to thrill
The heart forever; these, and more than these,
That only breathe in sacred silences,
Crown Motherhood among the chiefest sanctities.

Profane it not be word, nor deed, nor thought;’
          Woman or Man, profane it not!
It is an earnest and a holy thing
   Rightly to take upon thee, with its care,
   The old God-name of Father, from the lair
Of life’s vailed Mystery anew to bring
That awful presence from her brooding wing—
   A soul for a new clay-vest; born to bear
The hopes and terrors of incarnate being;
Fearful to call from his unfathomed where,
Far past the scope of archangelic seeing,
   Another Doer, and high-fated heir
Of a shut doom whose key is in the hand
Of Time the inexorable. With a brand
   Whose mark no future may wholly efface,
          Stands at life’s portal,
          Unmoved and immortal,
The Genius of the Law with awful grace,
   Silent and calmly grand!
And as ye call them, with high thought or base,
Stamps the deep nature into soul and form,
          By subtle art that cannot fail
          For anger’s shriek or sorrow’s wail
Or prayers that rise, too late, heaven’s folded gates to storm!
The good we do is greater than we mean,
   And fills to-morrow fuller than to-day;
For years to come will wear a deeper green,
   For this year’s tilth, than even the present may;
So evil planted in our bushing Spring 
   Is multiplied in Autumn; and we wrong
A helpless Future when we clip the wing
   Of this hour’s promise, budding full and strong.
The unborn have rights more sacred than our own,
   For all the great Hereafter slumbers there,
   Making its dumb defenselessness a prayer
For more than mercy to the years unknown,
Whose guerdon comes through us alone;
          Or whose slow doom
          We plant to bloom
In other centuries and another zone.

          Pause and beware!
   Unfaithful servants of the living God,
Sent to adorn his vineyard with all fair
And fruitful vines, pure hearts of men, to bear
The nuptial wine of perfect lives, the blood 
   Of an unmystic eucharist,
When the soul weds with Love the everlasting Christ,
          Tilling the virgin sod,
          Heedless, beware,
   With what wild hands ye sow abroad
Your dead-ripe degradations in the soil
Of an eternal future, nurturing there
Brambles for beauty, and the dragon’s teeth
Of hate and passion, from the thorny coil
   Of loves profaned, and poisoned virtue’s wreath,
   At whose rank vintage, reeking in the press,
Earth groans, heaven sickens, and the Almighty waits
   If yet ye may return to righteousness,
   And walk in wisdom’s narrow path,
   Ere in dyed garments from Idumea’s gates
He treads along the wine-press of his wrath.

   Pause while ye may, or pause ere long ye must.
   Great Nature’s mother honor, trodden in dust,
   Cries out against you for the sin that dooms
Her child to shame, and her own mother frown
          Severely just.
Remorse, the fire that burns, but not consumes,
   All loathly ills that hound unholy lust,
   All pangs that tear the flesh and cast you down,
   The unclean demons feeding ‘mid the tombs
   Of your dead virtues—the accumulate lees
   Of far transmitted folly and disease,
   Poured down from immemorial years
          To reek in these,
     With trip usury for their long arrears,
All lift together, as one tongue of flame,
A warning voice, a cry of protestation
   Against the profanation
          Of the great Father’s name.