THE TRUE CHURCH.

  I asked a holy man one day,
  “Where is the one true church, I pray?”

  “Go round the world,” said he, “and search: 
  No man hath found the one true church.”

  I pointed to a spire, cross-crowned. 
  “The church is false!” he cried, and frowned.

  But, murmuring he had told me wrong,
  I pointed to the entering throng.

  He answered, “If a church be true,
  It hath not many, but a few.”

  Around the font the people pressed,
  And crossed themselves from brow to breast.

  “A cross!” he cried, “writ on the brow
  In water!—­is it Christ’s?—­look thou!

  “Each forehead, frowning, sheds it off: 
  Christ’s cross abides through scowl and scoff.”

  Then, looking through the open door,
  We saw men kneeling on the floor;

  Faint candles, by the daylight dimmed,—­
  Like wicks the foolish virgins trimmed;

  Fair statues of the saints, as white
  As now their robes are, in God’s light;

  Sun-ladders, dropped aslant, all gold,—­
  Like stairs the angels trod of old.

  Around, above, from nave to roof,
  He gazed, and said, in sad reproof,—­

  “Alas! who is it understands
  God’s temple is not made with hands?”

  —­We walked along a shaded way,
  Beneath the apple-blooms of May,

  And came upon a church whose dome
  Bore still the cross, but not for Rome.

  We brushed a cobweb from a pane,
  And gazed within the sacred fane

  “Do prayers,” he asked, “the more avail,
  If murmured nigh an altar-rail?

  “Does water sprinkled from a bowl
  Wash any sin from any soul?

  “Do tongues that taste the bread and wine
  Speak truer after, by that sign?

  “The very priest, in gown and bands,
  Hath lying lips and guilty hands!”

  “He speaks no error,” answered I;
  “He says the living all shall die,

  “The dead all rise; and both are true;
  Both wholesome doctrines,—­old, not new.”

  My friend returned, “He aims a blow
  To strike the sins of long ago,—­

  “Yet shields, the while, with studied phrase,
  The evil present in these days.

  “Doth God in heaven impute no crime
  To prophets who belie their time?”

  —­We turned away among the tombs: 
  The bees were in the clover-blooms;

  The crickets leaped to let us pass;
  And God’s sweet breath was on the grass.

  We spelled the legends on the stones: 
  The graves were full of martyrs’ bones,—­

  Of bodies which the rack once brake
  In witness for the dear Lord’s sake,—­

  Of ashes gathered from the pyres
  Of saints whose souls fled up through fires.

  I heard him murmur, as we passed,
  “Thus won they all the crown at last;