NARRATIVE POEMS



THE TOILING OF FELIX

A LEGEND ON A NEW SAYING OF JESUS


In the rubbish heaps of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus, near the
River Nile, a party of English explorers, in the winter of 1897,
discovered a fragment of a papyrus book, written in the second or
third century, and hitherto unknown. This single leaf contained
parts of seven short sentences of Christ, each introduced by the
words, "Jesus says." It is to the fifth of these Sayings of Jesus
that the following poem refers.



THE TOILING OF FELIX


I

PRELUDE

Hear a word that Jesus spake