A Revivalist in Boston

But you shall walk the golden street,
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins

Going home by lamplight across Boston Common,
We heard him tell how God had entered in him,
And now he had the Word, and nothing other
Would do but he must cry it to his brother.

We stood and listened there—to nothing new.
Yet something loosed his tongue and drove him shouting.
Compulsion’s not play-acted in a face,
And he was telling us the way to grace.

Somehow we saw the youth that he had been,
Not one to notice; an ordinary boy—
Hardly the one the Lord would make His tool—
Shuffling his feet in Baptist Sunday school.

And then transfiguration came his way;
He knew the secret all the rest were seeking.
He made the tale of Christendom his own,
And hoarsely called his brethren to the throne.

The same old way; and yet we knew he saw
The angelic hosts whose names he stumbled over.
He made us hear the ranks of shining feet
Treading to glory’s throne up Tremont Street.