The King tears off his jewelled brooch
    And rends the robe of Coan hue;
  Bright emeralds and lustrous pearls
    Are flung aside, and ashes strew
  The royal head, discrowned and bent,
    As low he kneels God’s grace to sue.

  None thought to drink, none thought to eat;
    All from the table turned aside,
  And in their cradles wet with tears
    Starved babes in bitter anguish cried,
  For e’en the foster-mother stern
    To little lips the breast denied.

  The very flocks are closely penned
    By careful hands, lest they should gain
  Sweet water from the babbling stream
    Or wandering crop the dewy plain;
  And bleating sheep and lowing kine
    Within their barren stalls complain.

  Moved by such penitence, full soon
    God’s grace repealed the stern decree
  And curbed His righteous wrath; for aye,
    When man repents, His clemency
  Is swift to pardon and to hear
    His children weeping bitterly.

  Yet wherefore of that bygone race
    Should we anew the story tell? 
  For Christ’s pure soul by fasting long
    The clogging bonds of flesh did quell;
  He Whom the prophet’s voice foretold
    As god with us, Emmanuel.

  Man’s body—­frail by nature’s law
    And bound by pleasure’s easy chain—­
  He freed by virtue’s strong restraint,
    And gave it liberty again: 
  He broke the bonds of flesh, and Lust
    Was driven from his old domain.

  Deep in the inhospitable wild
    For forty days He dwelt alone
  Nor tasted food, till, thus prepared,
    All human weakness overthrown
  By fasting’s power, His mortal frame
    Rejoiced the spirit’s sway to own.

  The Adversary, marvelling
    To see this creature of a day
  Endure such toil, spent all his guile
    To learn if God in human clay
  Had come indeed; but soon rebuked
    Behind His back fled shamed away.

  Therefore let each with all his might
    Follow the way the Master taught,
  The law of consecrated life
    Which Christ unto His servants brought;
  Till, with the lusts of flesh subdued,
    The spirit reigns o’er act and thought.

  ’Tis this our jealous foe abhors,
    ’Tis this the Lord of earth and sky
  Approves; by this the soul is made
    Thy holy altar, God Most High: 
  Faith stirs within the slumbering heart
    And sin’s corroding power must fly.

  Swifter than water quenches fire,
    Swifter than sunshine melts the snow,
  Crushed out by soul-restoring fast
    Vanish the sins that rankly grow,
  If hand in hand with Abstinence
    Sweet Charity doth ever go.

  This too is Virtue’s noble task,
    To clothe the naked, and to feed
  The destitute, with kindly care
    To visit sufferers in their need;
  For king and beggar each must bear
    The lot by changeless Fate decreed.