There is a way that some by dialectic rhythm trod,
falling left to sin and rising right to God;
a trail that follows Him who became its suff'ring pioneer,
where joy succeeds triumphant guilt's evokéd tear,
and though by ordered sequence begins with an indictment,
does with finaled glory end with mercy's sure enrightment.
No soul may play at this or e'en by study master,
for its journey takes the unexpectant heart to shattering disaster,
and has each trav'ler from Sinai's crest to slip and mortal fall,
knocked to Hell's ravines where's but recriminating gall.
There the penitent contrite does loudly, longly make,
confession that, breast-beating, God should his life right take.
Thus so far beneath the earth he seems most damned of men,
and conceding all the wrong he owns accepts it as his end;
but here a trail, if true exercised, by alien illumination,
is manifest, a fresh laid out from that same God who cursed His own creation;
and though the gate be straightened and the road likewise narrow,
he'll find howe'er his line should weave, it's reckoned like an arrow.
None but He who is the sent and second Advocate
can so unburden men by adding ounceless weight,
or soul refresh through parched and arid sands,
save the gift and grace that waters jackaled lands;
for by theotic human majesty we're tutored in a mystery,
of a course antinimous and kept from view through history.
Learn, then, godless, of this oscillating cadence strange,
which does our sacred compass wholly backward change,
by drawing south the needle north above all angels' stations,
and takes us by a passage yet unknown to Jew and Gentile nations;
be made familiar as routine the regimen and march,
that life's but finding Him to save from villains e'er so arch.
And though endure you shameful must judgment's sting and stroke--
justice from the bar of Moses that fits you with death's yoke--
experience will have taught you this much and thus far,
that just as sages East were nightly led by but one star,
if to habitations desolate He should lead you, or to spaces God-forsaken,
you will by pardon's rich reward see you were no fool mistaken.
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