Of strained worship that is filling now

That sky of sanctuary-that doth menace make Of his entreaty-that demands that dares, Seeks out, confronts, and takes-the Sanhedrim ?

It is! The price of venal arbitry
Is in that hand of beggary held up,
That with the vow of violence doth swear,
Upon his temples, to the covenant deed.

It is! For at their feet is pleading now,

Cast forth and thirty-fold, his grievance sum.

-Words to their telling!

Judges of the deed

The blood is innocent this hand hath shed!

This hand that lifts at your tribunal up

Its angry palm. Partakers of the deed

Witness to mine ablution of the lie

That ever, on the slanderous tongue of time,

Shall brand me in your name confederate!

Take back! Take back, with usury of this hate,

That heaves, I know how impotently here

Against ye all, these wages of my sin!

And to the license of that judgment goes

The unavenged of a self wrought wrong,

To retribution self administer'd—

Departing-whither?

O idolatrous!

Ambition's race of evil ever thus

Runs hoodwink'd through its course of conflict whole:

And darkest deeds are foremost at the goal!

THE END.

NOTE TO BOOK V.

(a)

"That to the grave of waters travelleth,"

The brook Cedron, flowing between the city and the mount of Olives, takes the valley east of Jerusalem, and loses itself in the Dead Sea.

BACKHOUSE, PRINTER, WELLS.