They bring—while fields are chiming with soft notes
Of the arisen lilies—from white pods
Smell-less offerings to anaemic gods;
As earth, resurgent, trumpets at their throats
To hail her gods of the first dark surmise—
Who parted waters with a glistening tusk
And came out with the privy stars at dusk
To trouble rivers with their small fierce eyes.

They gather at the cross, whose haggard sign
Impends in the moon-ushered dawn that leans—
In rose and ivory on tender greens
Of new corn covering an old design—
To light the brown rapt faces who kept tryst
With the all dark bright gods that they name Christ.