Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, JOHN THE BAPTIST, by JOHN STUART BLACKIE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

JOHN THE BAPTIST, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Who is he in hairy raiment
Last Line: Saviour lowly led!
Subject(s): Baptists; Religion; Theology


WHO is he in hairy raiment
Clad, i' the wilderness
Preaching freely without payment
Truth and righteousness?
Whoso hears, and not despises,
Him with water he baptises,
In the contrite hour;
Whoso hears with haughty scorning,
Him he smites with holy warning,
And with prophet's power.

Swarms the city from its corners,
Motley bad and good;
Thoughtless hearts and hoary mourners
Haste to Jordan's flood;
Some for sin their souls abasing;
Some to feed their eyes with gazing;
Some to search and try
With captious craft the shaggy Preacher,
And themselves to teach the Teacher;
Some they know not why.

Comes the Rabbi, with a stately
Measured gravity;
With a solemn air, sedately
Comes the Pharisee;
Wide his robe, and on the border
Sacred texts, in well-match'd order,
Show his purpose plain.
With a nice and fenced existence
Far to keep, at holy distance,
Every look profane.

Comes fat Priest, and Pontiff portly,
Each with bloated face;
Comes Herodian, smooth and courtly,
With a gay grimace.
Comes the Essene from his station
Of secluded contemplation
With mild gravity;
With an eye of twinkling keenness,
And a smile of cold sereneness,
Comes the Sadducee.

Comes the Soldier, firm and steady,
Frolicsome and gay,
With a quick hand ever ready
For the rising fray.
Comes the Usurer, dry and meagre,
Comes the Publican, sharp and eager
For great Caesar's penny.
With a train of silken pages
Comes the rich man; with scant wages
Come the burden'd many.

What saith he, the wayside Preacher,
To this motley crew?
Doth he come a cunning teacher
Of lore strange and new?
Hath he drawn without omission,
Point for point, a long confession,
To inform the brain?
Piled a proud word-architecture,
Fenced it round with nice conjecture,
And distinctions vain?

Hath he won a girth to measure
God, a chain to bind
The Infinite, and mapp'd at leisure
The omniscient Mind?
Hath he trimm'd an old Theogony,
Cumbrous rear'd a new cosmogony,
To employ the schools?
Not with speculation vainest
Preacheth he; -- with wisdom plainest,
And with simplest rules.

Thus he speaks -- "Repent! repentance
Smooths Messiah's way;
'Tis an old and weighty sentence,
Weigh it well to-day.
Hast thou nursed a sin? -- confess it;
Hast thou done a wrong? -- redress it;
And, with just desire,
Ask no more than what is due thee;
Be content, when offered to thee,
Is thy lawful hire.

"Say not, with vain pride elated,
'God's own people we,'
Tracing high a hoary-dated
Patriarch pedigree.
Peopled earth is thickly studded
With the children, common-blooded,
Of the Great I AM.
From the hard flint, at his pleasure,
God can raise up without measure
Sons to Abraham.

"Hear, whose barren trunk hath cumber'd
Now too long the ground.
Saith the Lord, your days are number'd;
Hark! with crushing sound,
Falls the axe that fells the fruitless!
Toils he not with labour bootless
Who now smites the tree.
He his winnow'd wheat shall garner,
But like empty chaff the scorner
Burn like chaff shall he."

Thus he preach'd to great and small men,
Of the human right;
Like the blessed sun, on all men
Shedding simple light.
O! wise are they who list such preaching,
Not too high for common teaching
In life's common ways;
Not with proud pretence ballooing,
Nor with gay parade festooing,
To catch the public gaze.

Flap who will the air-borne pinion,
Sweeping far and free;
Solid earth be my dominion,
Baptist John, with thee!
In the plainest path of duty,
Stamping daily things with beauty,
I with thee will tread;
Where thy warning fingers pointed
I would follow, where th' anointed
Saviour lowly led!





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