A Bargain

Scoffer, you cry, “Where is your ‘other world,’Your fabled heaven in far eternities?”Well said, but first, before your lip is curled,Tell (’tis a little thing) where this world is!

Wild tempest swirled on Moscow’s castled height;Wild sleet shot slanting down the wind of night;Quick snarling mouths from out the darkness sprangTo strike you in the face with tooth and fang.Javelins of ice hung on the roofs of all;

The very stones were aching in the wall,Where Ivan stood a watchman on his hour,Guarding the Kremlin by the northern tower,When, lo! a half-bare beggar tottered past,Shrunk up and stiffened in the bitter blast.A heap of misery he drifted by,And from the heap came out a broken cry.

At this the watchman straightened with a start;A tender grief was tugging at his heart,The thought of his dead father, bent and oldAnd lying lonesome in the ground so cold.Then cried the watchman starting from his post:“Little father, this is yours; you need it most!”And tearing off his hairy coat, he ranAnd wrapt it warm around the beggar man.

That night the piling snows began to fall,And the good watchman died beside the wall.But waking in the Better Land that liesBeyond the reaches of these cooping skies,Behold, the Lord came out to greet him home,Wearing the coat he gave by Moscow’s dome—Wearing the hairy heavy coat he gaveBy Moscow’s tower before he felt the grave!

And Ivan, by the old Earth-memory stirred,Cried softly with a wonder in his word:“And where, dear Lord, found you this coat of mine,A thing unfit for glory such as Thine?”Then the Lord answered with a look of light:“This coat, My son, you gave to Me last night.”

Who puts back into place a fallen bar,Or flings a rock out of a traveled road,His feet are moving toward the central star,His name is whispered in the God’s abode.