God's masterpiece in human heart
Though writ in lines of fire.

The self-same skilful hands, that trace
Those varying tints on Nature's face,
Stir human Nature with each grace
By which it can be moved;

St. Stephen's name may light our land,
But few his life can understand;

The heart must be upturned from earth
To ken the beauty and the worth
That are by Jesus loved.

IX

Not his, the force that such minds prize,

That bids a nation raise

The sculptured tomb, where staring eyes

May scan the words of praise;

Had he but triumphed in the field;

And not himself been forced to yield

His life to vilest wrong:

Had lived to realise high fame

As mighty bishop he might claim

Grand choruses of song.

X

Those reproducing 2 powers whose aid
Makes dead men speak again,

And oft to sunshine turns the shade
Of solitude and pain,

He knew not, nor had ever heard

The depths of God's completed word
Now published to all:

Albeit he may have felt the force
Of Peter's soldier-like discourse,

He never heard with brightening eye

St. James's pure morality,

His brother's tender symphony

On love that never passeth by,

Or reasoning of Paul.

ΧΙ

Of Paul, whose words unload our woe,

Relight the tear-dimmed eye,

And spread upon earth's tomb the glow

Of Immortality!

Upraised on sacred wisdom's height

He caught that Sun's first gleams of light

Rising from Death's cold wave;
Steeped in its flood himself, he threw

On all he influenced the hue

Of life beyond the grave.

XII

That landscape in itself contains
All that the heart can move,

The crags of wrath, the sea-spread plains

Of God's unbounded Love,

The Gospel streams, like rivers broad,

In varied narrative record

God's message to man's soul;

The Epistles next, lake after lake,

Blend each with each, and join to make

A vast harmonious whole.

XIII

Ofttimes he heard his much-loved Lord

His lofty creed proclaim,

And in his inmost being stored

Each word, and learnt its aim;

Yet hosts assembled there beside
Came but to stare, to mock, deride,

And, jesting, went away;

The seed that was so freely sown

Could find on slabs of earthless stone

No spot, wherein to stay.

XIV

Night after night, with posture bent,

But upward-searching eyes,

He gazed upon the firmament
Of Syria's cloudless skies;

By day he viewed God's works around
Peopling the sea, the sky, the ground,
The lake, the field, the wood;
In things inanimate he found
Expression, harmony and sound;
In objects passed unheeded by,
His all-discerning mind could spy
The Author of all good.

XV

In Christ Eternal Deity

Once dwelt within the man,

While Stephen to his Lord drew nigh

As near as mortal can;

The Almighty Father once allowed The powers of Hell in circling shroud To wrap the Saviour's breast;

No lingering torture's long-drawn strain Wore the first martyr's heart and brain, No gloom his soul opprest.

XVI

The virgin leaflets of the Spring,
The Summer's burning strength,

The shade that Autumn evenings fling,
The Winter's darkness' length:

These seasons in their annual chime,
Rung from the belfry-tower of Time
Repeated o'er and o'er,

Made music to the eager mind

Searching sweet harmonies to find

In Nature's boundless store.

XVII

We do not know how many years
Strengthened and trained his mind:
At once he on our sight appears
From earthly dross refined: