EASTER DAY.
NAPLES, 1849.
Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head
My heart was hot within me; till at last
My brain was lightened, when my tongue had said—
Christ is not risen!
Christ is not risen, no—
He lies and moulders low;
Christ is not risen.
What though the stone were rolled away, and though
The grave found empty there?—
If not there, then elsewhere;
If not where Joseph laid Him first, why then
Where other men
Translaid Him after; in some humbler clay
Long ere to-day
Corruption that sad perfect work hath done,
Which here she scarcely, lightly had begun.
The foul engendered worm
Feeds on the flesh of the life-giving form
Of our most Holy and Anointed One.
He is not risen, no—
He lies and moulders low;
Christ is not risen.
What if the women, ere the dawn was grey,
Saw one or more great angels, as they say,
(Angels, or Him himself)? Yet neither there, nor then,
Nor afterward, nor elsewhere, nor at all,
