The Answer

The Answer

DO YE BELIEVE?  We never wrote

    For fools at ease to know

The doubt that grips us by the throat,

    The faith that lurks below;

But we have stood beside our dead,

    And in that hour of need,

One tear the Man of Sorrows shed

    Was more than any creed.

DO YE BELIEVE? - from age to age

    The little thinkers cry;

And rhymesters ape the puling sage

    In pride of artistry.

Did Joshua stay a sun that rolls

    Around a central earth? -

Our modern men have modern souls

    And formulate their mirth.

But, while they laugh, from shore to shore,

    From sea to moaning sea,

Eloi, Eloi, goes up once more

    Lama sabacthani!

The heavens are like a scroll unfurled,

    The writing flames above -

This is the King of all the world

    Upon His Cross of Love!

His members marred with wounds are we

    In whom the Spirit strives,

One Body of one Mystery,

    One Life in many lives:

Darkly as in a glass we see

    The mystic glories glow,

Nor shrink from God's Infinity

    Incarnate here below;

In flower and dust, in chaff and grain,

    He binds Himself and dies,

We live by His eternal pain,

    His hourly sacrifice:

The limits of our mortal life

    Are His: the whisper thrills

Under the sea's perpetual strife

    And through the sunburnt hills.

Seek; ye shall find each flower on earth

    A gateway to My heart,

Whose Life has brought each leaf to birth:

    The whole is in the part!

So to My sufferers have ye given

    What help or hope may be,

Oh then, through earth, through hell, through heaven,

    Ye did it unto Me!

Darkly, as in a glass, our sight

    Still gropes through Time and Space:

We cannot see the Light of Light

    With angels, face to face;

Only the tale His martyrs tell

    Around the dark earth rings -

He died and He went down to hell

    And lives - the King of Kings!

DO YE BELIEVE? On every side

    Great hints of Him go by:

Souls that are hourly crucified

    On some new Calvary!

Oh, tortured faces, white and meek,

    Half seen amidst the crowd,

Grey suffering lips that never speak,

    The Glory in the Cloud!

DO YE BELIEVE? The straws that dance

    Far down the dusty road

Mean little to the careless glance

    By careless eyes bestowed,

Till full into your face the wind

    Smites, and the laugh is dumb;

And, from the rending heavens behind

    Christ answers - Lo, I come. 
                                                     Alfred Noyes