I Heard Immanuel Singing

(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.)

This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the well-known tune: -

            "Last night I lay a-sleeping,
            There came a dream so fair,
            I stood in Old Jerusalem
            Beside the temple there, - " etc.

Yet this tune is not to be fitted on, arbitrarily.    It is here given to suggest the manner of handling rather than determine it.


                    # To be sung. #
    I heard Immanuel singing
    Within his own good lands,
    I saw him bend above his harp.
    I watched his wandering hands
    Lost amid the harp-strings;
    Sweet, sweet I heard him play.
    His wounds were altogether healed.
    Old things had passed away.

    All things were new, but music.
    The blood of David ran
    Within the Son of David,
    Our God, the Son of Man.
    He was ruddy like a shepherd.
    His bold young face, how fair.
    Apollo of the silver bow
    Had not such flowing hair.

                    # To be read very softly, but in spirited response. #
    I saw Immanuel singing
    On a tree-girdled hill.
    The glad remembering branches
    Dimly echoed still
    The grand new song proclaiming
    The Lamb that had been slain.
    New-built, the Holy City
    Gleamed in the murmuring plain.

    The crowning hours were over.
    The pageants all were past.
    Within the many mansions
    The hosts, grown still at last,
    In homes of holy mystery
    Slept long by crooning springs
    Or waked to peaceful glory,
    A universe of Kings.

                    # To be sung. #
    He left his people happy.
    He wandered free to sigh
    Alone in lowly friendship
    With the green grass and the sky.
    He murmured ancient music
    His red heart burned to sing
    Because his perfect conquest
    Had grown a weary thing.

    No chant of gilded triumph -
    His lonely song was made
    Of Art's deliberate freedom;
    Of minor chords arrayed
    In soft and shadowy colors
    That once were radiant flowers: -
    The Rose of Sharon, bleeding
    In Olive-shadowed bowers: -

    And all the other roses
    In the songs of East and West
    Of love and war and worshipping,
    And every shield and crest
    Of thistle or of lotus
    Or sacred lily wrought
    In creeds and psalms and palaces
    And temples of white thought: -

                    # To be read very softly, yet in spirited response. #
    All these he sang, half-smiling
    And weeping as he smiled,
    Laughing, talking to his harp
    As to a new-born child: -
    As though the arts forgotten
    But bloomed to prophecy
    These careless, fearless harp-strings,
    New-crying in the sky.
                    # To be sung. #
    "When this his hour of sorrow
    For flowers and Arts of men
    Has passed in ghostly music,"
    I asked my wild heart then -
    What will he sing to-morrow,
    What wonder, all his own
    Alone, set free, rejoicing,
    With a green hill for his throne?
    What will he sing to-morrow
    What wonder all his own
    Alone, set free, rejoicing,
    With a green hill for his throne?