Take the dead Christ to my chamber, <br />The Christ I brought from Rome; <br />Over all the tossing ocean, <br />He has reached his western home; <br />Bear him as in procession, <br />And lay him solemnly <br />Where, through weary night and morning, <br />He shall bear me company. <br /> <br />The name I bear is other <br />Than that I bore by birth, <br />And I've given life to children <br />Who'll grow and dwell on earth; <br />But the time comes swiftly towards me <br />(Nor do I bid it stay), <br />When the dead Christ will be more to me <br />Than all I hold to-day. <br /> <br />Lay the dead Christ beside me, <br />Oh, press him on my heart, <br />I would hold him long and painfully <br />Till the weary tears should start; <br />Till the divine contagion <br />Heal me of self and sin, <br />And the cold weight press wholly down <br />The pulse that chokes within. <br /> <br />Reproof and frost, they fret me, <br />Towards the free, the sunny lands, <br />From the chaos of existence <br />I stretch these feeble hands; <br />And, penitential, kneeling, <br />Pray God would not be wroth, <br />Who gave not the strength of feeling, <br />And strength of labor both. <br /> <br />Thou'rt but a wooden carving, <br />Defaced of worms, and old; <br />Yet more to me thou couldst not be <br />Wert thou all wrapt in gold, <br />Like the gem-bedizened baby <br />Which, at the Twelth-day noon, <br />They show from the Ara Coeli's steps, <br />To a merry dancing tune. <br /> <br />I ask of thee no wonders, <br />No changing white or red; <br />I dream not thou art living, <br />I love and prize thee dead. <br />That salutary deadness <br />I seek, through want and pain, <br />From which God's own high power can bid <br />Our virtue rise again.<br /><br />Julia Ward Howe<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-dead-christ/
