{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_9573/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_9573","id":"gutenberg_9573","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9573","summary":null,"tags":["American poetry -- 19th century","Category: American Literature","Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"This eBook was produced by David Widger\n\n\n\n\n\n                            POEMS OF NATURE\n\n                    POEMS SUBJECTIVE AND REMINISCENT\n\n                            RELIGIOUS POEMS\n\n                                   BY\n                        JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER\n\n\n\nCONTENTS:\n\n     THE ANSWER\n     THE ETERNAL GOODNESS\n     THE COMMON QUESTION\n     OUR MASTER\n     THE MEETING\n     THE CLEAR VISION\n     DIVINE COMPASSION\n     THE PRAYER-SEEKER\n     THE BREWING OF SOMA\n     A WOMAN\n     THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ\n     IN QUEST\n     THE FRIEND'S BURIAL\n     A CHRISTMAS CARMEN\n     VESTA\n     CHILD-SONGS\n     THE HEALER\n     THE TWO ANGELS\n     OVERRULED\n     HYMN OF THE DUNKERS\n     GIVING AND TAKING\n     THE VISION OF ECHARD\n     INSCRIPTIONS\n     ON A SUN-DIAL\n     ON A FOUNTAIN\n     THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER\n     BY THEIR WORKS\n     THE WORD\n     THE BOOK\n     REQUIREMENT\n     HELP\n     UTTERANCE\n     ORIENTAL MAXIMS\n     THE INWARD JUDGE\n     LAYING UP TREASURE\n     CONDUCT\n     AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT\n     THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS\n     AT LAST\n     WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET\n     THE \"STORY OF IDA\"\n     THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT\n     THE TWO LOVES\n     ADJUSTMENT\n     HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ\n     REVELATION\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE ANSWER.\n\nSpare me, dread angel of reproof,\nAnd let the sunshine weave to-day\nIts gold-threads in the warp and woof\nOf life so poor and gray.\n\nSpare me awhile; the flesh is weak.\nThese lingering feet, that fain would stray\nAmong the flowers, shall some day seek\nThe strait and narrow way.\n\nTake off thy ever-watchful eye,\nThe awe of thy rebuking frown;\nThe dullest slave at times must sigh\nTo fling his burdens down;\n\nTo drop his galley's straining oar,\nAnd press, in summer warmth and calm,\nThe lap of some enchanted shore\nOf blossom and of balm.\n\nGrudge not my life its hour of bloom,\nMy heart its taste of long desire;\nThis day be mine: be those to come\nAs duty shall require.\n\nThe deep voice answered to my own,\nSmiting my selfish prayers away;\n\"To-morrow is with God alone,\nAnd man hath but to-day.\n\n\"Say not, thy fond, vain heart within,\nThe Father's arm shall still be wide,\nWhen from these pleasant ways of sin\nThou turn'st at eventide.\n\n\"'Cast thyself down,' the tempter saith,\n'And angels shall thy feet upbear.'\nHe bids thee make a lie of faith,\nAnd blasphemy of prayer.\n\n\"Though God be good and free be heaven,\nNo force divine can love compel;\nAnd, though the song of sins forgiven\nMay sound through lowest hell,\n\n\"The sweet persuasion of His voice\nRespects thy sanctity of will.\nHe giveth day: thou hast thy choice\nTo walk in darkness still;\n\n\"As one who, turning from the light,\nWatches his own gray shadow fall,\nDoubting, upon his path of night,\nIf there be day at all!\n\n\"No word of doom may shut thee out,\nNo wind of wrath may downward whirl,\nNo swords of fire keep watch about\nThe open gates of pearl;\n\n\"A tenderer light than moon or sun,\nThan song of earth a sweeter hymn,\nMay shine and sound forever on,\nAnd thou be deaf and dim.\n\n\"Forever round the Mercy-seat\nThe guiding lights of Love shall burn;\nBut what if, habit-bound, thy feet\nShall lack the will to turn?\n\n\"What if thine eye refuse to see,\nThine ear of Heaven's free welcome fail,\nAnd thou a willing captive be,\nThyself thy own dark jail?\n\n\"Oh, doom beyond the saddest guess,\nAs the long years of God unroll,\nTo make thy dreary selfishness\nThe prison of a soul!\n\n\"To doubt the love that fain would break\nThe fetters from thy self-bound limb;\nAnd dream that God can thee forsake\nAs thou forsakest Him!\"\n1863.\n\n\n\nTHE ETERNAL GOODNESS.\n\nO friends! with whom my feet have trod\nThe quiet aisles of prayer,\nGlad witness to your zeal for God\nAnd love of man I bear.\n\nI trace your lines of argument;\nYour logic linked and strong\nI weigh as one who dreads dissent,\nAnd fears a doubt as wrong.\n\nBut still my human hands are weak\nTo hold your iron creeds\nAgainst the words ye bid me speak\nMy heart within me pleads.\n\nWho fathoms the Eternal Thought?\nWho talks of scheme and plan?\nThe Lord is God! He needeth not\nThe poor device of man.\n\nI walk with bare, hushed feet the ground\nYe tread with boldness shod;\nI dare not fix with mete and bound\nThe love and power of God.\n\nYe praise His justice; even such\nHis pitying love I deem\nYe seek a king; I fain would touch\nThe robe that hath no seam.\n\nYe see the curse which overbroods\nA world of pain and loss;\nI hear our Lord's beatitudes\nAnd prayer upon the cross.\n\nMore than your schoolmen teach, within\nMyself, alas! I know\nToo dark ye cannot paint the sin,\nToo small the merit show.\n\nI bow my forehead to the dust,\nI veil mine eyes for shame,\nAnd urge, in trembling self-distrust,\nA prayer without a claim.\n\nI see the wrong that round me lies,\nI feel the guilt within;\nI hear, with groan and travail-cries,\nThe world confess its sin.\n\nYet, in the maddening maze of things,\nAnd tossed by storm and flood,\nTo one fixed trust my spirit clings;\nI know that God is good!\n\nNot mine to look where cherubim\nAnd seraphs may not see,\nBut nothing can be good in Him\nWhich evil is in me.\n\nThe wrong that pains my soul below\nI dare not throne above,\nI know not of His hate,--I know\nHis goodness and His love.\n\nI dimly guess from blessings known\nOf greater out of sight,\nAnd, with the chastened Psalmist, own\nHis judgments too are right.\n\nI long for household voices gone,\nFor vanished smiles I long,\nBut God hath led my dear ones on,\nAnd He can do no wrong.\n\nI know not what the future hath\nOf marvel or surprise,\nAssured alone that life and death\nHis mercy underlies.\n\nAnd if my heart and flesh are weak\nTo bear an untried pain,\nThe bruised reed He will not break,\nBut strengthen and sustain.\n\nNo offering of my own I have,\nNor works my faith to prove;\nI can but give the gifts He gave,\nAnd plead His love for love.\n\nAnd so beside the Silent Sea\nI wait the muffled oar;\nNo harm from Him can come to me\nOn ocean or on shore.\n\nI know not where His islands lift\nTheir fronded palms in air;\nI only know I cannot drift\nBeyond His love and care.\n\nO brothers! if my faith is vain,\nIf hopes like these betray,\nPray for me that my feet may gain\nThe sure and safer way.\n\nAnd Thou, O Lord! by whom are seen\nThy creatures as they be,\nForgive me if too close I lean\nMy human heart on Thee!\n1865.\n\n\n\nTHE COMMON QUESTION.\n\nBehind us at our evening meal\nThe gray bird ate his fill,\nSwung downward by a single claw,\nAnd wiped his hooked bill.\n\nHe shook his wings and crimson tail,\nAnd set his head aslant,\nAnd, in his sharp, impatient way,\nAsked, \"What does Charlie want?\"\n\n\"Fie, silly bird!\" I answered, \"tuck\nYour head beneath your wing,\nAnd go to sleep;\"--but o'er and o'er\nHe asked the self-same thing.\n\nThen, smiling, to myself I said\nHow like are men and birds!\nWe all are saying what he says,\nIn action or in words.\n\nThe boy with whip and top and drum,\nThe girl with hoop and doll,\nAnd men with lands and houses, ask\nThe question of Poor Poll.\n\nHowever full, with something more\nWe fain the bag would cram;\nWe sigh above our crowded nets\nFor fish that never swam.\n\nNo bounty of indulgent Heaven\nThe vague desire can stay;\nSelf-love is still a Tartar mill\nFor grinding prayers alway.\n\nThe dear God hears and pities all;\nHe knoweth all our wants;\nAnd what we blindly ask of Him\nHis love withholds or grants.\n\nAnd so I sometimes think our prayers\nMight well be merged in one;\nAnd nest and perch and hearth and church\nRepeat, \"Thy will be done.\"\n\n\n\nOUR MASTER.\n\nImmortal Love, forever full,\nForever flowing free,\nForever shared, forever whole,\nA never-ebbing sea!\n\nOur outward lips confess the name\nAll other names above;\nLove only knoweth whence it came\nAnd comprehendeth love.\n\nBlow, winds of God, awake and blow\nThe mists of earth away!\nShine out, O Light Divine, and show\nHow wide and far we stray!\n\nHush every lip, close every book,\nThe strife of tongues forbear;\nWhy forward reach, or backward look,\nFor love that clasps like air?\n\nWe may not climb the heavenly steeps\nTo bring the Lord Christ down\nIn vain we search the lowest deeps,\nFor Him no depths can drown.\n\nNor holy bread, nor blood of grape,\nThe lineaments restore\nOf Him we know in outward shape\nAnd in the flesh no more.\n\nHe cometh not a king to reign;\nThe world's long hope is dim;\nThe weary centuries watch in vain\nThe clouds of heaven for Him.\n\nDeath comes, life goes; the asking eye\nAnd ear are answerless;\nThe grave is dumb, the hollow sky\nIs sad with silentness.\n\nThe letter fails, and systems fall,\nAnd every symbol wanes;\nThe Spirit over-brooding all\nEternal Love remains.\n\nAnd not for signs in heaven above\nOr earth below they look,\nWho know with John His smile of love,\nWith Peter His rebuke.\n\nIn joy of inward peace, or sense\nOf sorrow over sin,\nHe is His own best evidence,\nHis witness is within.\n\nNo fable old, nor mythic lore,\nNor dream of bards and seers,\nNo dead fact stranded on the shore\nOf the oblivious years;--\n\nBut warm, sweet, tender, even yet\nA present help is He;\nAnd faith has still its Olivet,\nAnd love its Galilee.\n\nThe healing of His seamless dress\nIs by our beds of pain;\nWe touch Him in life's throng and press,\nAnd we are whole again.\n\nThrough Him the first fond prayers are said\nOur lips of childhood frame,\nThe last low whispers of our dead\nAre burdened with His name.\n\nOur Lord and Master of us all!\nWhate'er our name or sign,\nWe own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,\nWe test our lives by Thine.\n\nThou judgest us; Thy purity\nDoth all our lusts condemn;\nThe love that draws us nearer Thee\nIs hot with wrath to them.\n\nOur thoughts lie open to Thy sight;\nAnd, naked to Thy glance,\nOur secret sins are in the light\nOf Thy pure countenance.\n\nThy healing pains, a keen distress\nThy tender light shines in;\nThy sweetness is the bitterness,\nThy grace the pang of sin.\n\nYet, weak and blinded though we be,\nThou dost our service own;\nWe bring our varying gifts to Thee,\nAnd Thou rejectest none.\n\nTo Thee our full humanity,\nIts joys and pains, belong;\nThe wrong of man to man on Thee\nInflicts a deeper wrong.\n\nWho hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes\nTherein to Thee allied;\nAll sweet accords of hearts and homes\nIn Thee are multiplied.\n\nDeep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine,\nWithin our earthly sod,\nMost human and yet most divine,\nThe flower of man and God!\n\nO Love! O Life! Our faith and sight\nThy presence maketh one\nAs through transfigured clouds of white\nWe trace the noon-day sun.\n\nSo, to our mortal eyes subdued,\nFlesh-veiled, but not concealed,\nWe know in Thee the fatherhood\nAnd heart of God revealed.\n\nWe faintly hear, we dimly see,\nIn differing phrase we pray;\nBut, dim or clear, we own in Thee\nThe Light, the Truth, the Way!\n\nThe homage that we render Thee\nIs still our Father's own;\nNo jealous claim or rivalry\nDivides the Cross and Throne.\n\nTo do Thy will is more than praise,\nAs words are less than deeds,\nAnd simple trust can find Thy ways\nWe miss with chart of creeds.\n\nNo pride of self Thy service hath,\nNo place for me and mine;\nOur human strength is weakness, death\nOur life, apart from Thine.\n\nApart from Thee all gain is loss,\nAll labor vainly done;\nThe solemn shadow of Thy Cross\nIs better than the sun.\n\nAlone, O Love ineffable!\nThy saving name is given;\nTo turn aside from Thee is hell,\nTo walk with Thee is heaven!\n\nHow vain, secure in all Thou art,\nOur noisy championship\nThe sighing of the contrite heart\nIs more than flattering lip.\n\nNot Thine the bigot's partial plea,\nNor Thine the zealot's ban;\nThou well canst spare a love of Thee\nWhich ends in hate of man.\n\nOur Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,\nWhat may Thy service be?--\nNor name, nor form, nor ritual word,\nBut simply following Thee.\n\nWe bring no ghastly holocaust,\nWe pile no graven stone;\nHe serves thee best who loveth most\nHis brothers and Thy own.\n\nThy litanies, sweet offices\nOf love and gratitude;\nThy sacramental liturgies,\nThe joy of doing good.\n\nIn vain shall waves of incense drift\nThe vaulted nave around,\nIn vain the minster turret lift\nIts brazen weights of sound.\n\nThe heart must ring Thy Christmas bells,\nThy inward altars raise;\nIts faith and hope Thy canticles,\nAnd its obedience praise!\n1866.\n\n\n\nTHE MEETING.\n\n     The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis\n     Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in\n     spirit and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender\n     concern to her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence\n     and rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to\n     her apprehended duty she made visits of Christian love to various\n     parts of Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine.\n\nThe elder folks shook hands at last,\nDown seat by seat the signal passed.\nTo simple ways like ours unused,\nHalf solemnized and half amused,\nWith long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest\nHis sense of glad relief expressed.\nOutside, the hills lay warm in sun;\nThe cattle in the meadow-run\nStood half-leg deep; a single bird\nThe green repose above us stirred.\n\"What part or lot have you,\" he said,\n\"In these dull rites of drowsy-head?\nIs silence worship? Seek it where\nIt soothes with dreams the summer air,\nNot in this close and rude-benched hall,\nBut where soft lights and shadows fall,\nAnd all the slow, sleep-walking hours\nGlide soundless over grass and flowers!\nFrom time and place and form apart,\nIts holy ground the human heart,\nNor ritual-bound nor templeward\nWalks the free spirit of the Lord!\nOur common Master did not pen\nHis followers up from other men;\nHis service liberty indeed,\nHe built no church, He framed no creed;\nBut while the saintly Pharisee\nMade broader his phylactery,\nAs from the synagogue was seen\nThe dusty-sandalled Nazarene\nThrough ripening cornfields lead the way\nUpon the awful Sabbath day,\nHis sermons were the healthful talk\nThat shorter made the mountain-walk,\nHis wayside texts were flowers and birds,\nWhere mingled with His gracious words\nThe rustle of the tamarisk-tree\nAnd ripple-wash of Galilee.\"\n\n\"Thy words are well, O friend,\" I said;\n\"Unmeasured and unlimited,\nWith noiseless slide of stone to stone,\nThe mystic Church of God has grown.\nInvisible and silent stands\nThe temple never made with hands,\nUnheard the voices still and small\nOf its unseen confessional.\nHe needs no special place of prayer\nWhose hearing ear is everywhere;\nHe brings not back the childish days\nThat ringed the earth with stones of praise,\nRoofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid\nThe plinths of Phil e's colonnade.\nStill less He owns the selfish good\nAnd sickly growth of solitude,--\nThe worthless grace that, out of sight,\nFlowers in the desert anchorite;\nDissevered from the suffering whole,\nLove hath no power to save a soul.\nNot out of Self, the origin\nAnd native air and soil of sin,\nThe living waters spring and flow,\nThe trees with leaves of healing grow.\n\n\"Dream not, O friend, because I seek\nThis quiet shelter twice a week,\nI better deem its pine-laid floor\nThan breezy hill or sea-sung shore;\nBut nature is not solitude\nShe crowds us with her thronging wood;\nHer many hands reach out to us,\nHer many tongues are garrulous;\nPerpetual riddles of surprise\nShe offers to our ears and eyes;\nShe will not leave our senses still,\nBut drags them captive at her will\nAnd, making earth too great for heaven,\nShe hides the Giver in the given.\n\n\"And so, I find it well to come\nFor deeper rest to this still room,\nFor here the habit of the soul\nFeels less the outer world's control;\nThe strength of mutual purpose pleads\nMore earnestly our common needs;\nAnd from the silence multiplied\nBy these still forms on either side,\nThe world that time and sense have known\nFalls off and leaves us God alone.\n\n\"Yet rarely through the charmed repose\nUnmixed the stream of motive flows,\nA flavor of its many springs,\nThe tints of earth and sky it brings;\nIn the still waters needs must be\nSome shade of human sympathy;\nAnd here, in its accustomed place,\nI look on memory's dearest face;\nThe blind by-sitter guesseth not\nWhat shadow haunts that vacant spot;\nNo eyes save mine alone can see\nThe love wherewith it welcomes me!\nAnd still, with those alone my kin,\nIn doubt and weakness, want and sin,\nI bow my head, my heart I bare\nAs when that face was living there,\nAnd strive (too oft, alas! in vain)\nThe peace of simple trust to gain,\nFold fancy's restless wings, and lay\nThe idols of my heart away.\n\n\"Welcome the silence all unbroken,\nNor less the words of fitness spoken,--\nSuch golden words as hers for whom\nOur autumn flowers have just made room;\nWhose hopeful utterance through and through\nThe freshness of the morning blew;\nWho loved not less the earth that light\nFell on it from the heavens in sight,\nBut saw in all fair forms more fair\nThe Eternal beauty mirrored there.\nWhose eighty years but added grace\nAnd saintlier meaning to her face,--\nThe look of one who bore away\nGlad tidings from the hills of day,\nWhile all our hearts went forth to meet\nThe coming of her beautiful feet!\nOr haply hers, whose pilgrim tread\nIs in the paths where Jesus led;\nWho dreams her childhood's Sabbath dream\nBy Jordan's willow-shaded stream,\nAnd, of the hymns of hope and faith,\nSung by the monks of Nazareth,\nHears pious echoes, in the call\nTo prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,\nRepeating where His works were wrought\nThe lesson that her Master taught,\nOf whom an elder Sibyl gave,\nThe prophecies of Cuma 's cave.\n\n\"I ask no organ's soulless breath\nTo drone the themes of life and death,\nNo altar candle-lit by day,\nNo ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,\nNo cool philosophy to teach\nIts bland audacities of speech\nTo double-tasked idolaters\nThemselves their gods and worshippers,\nNo pulpit hammered by the fist\nOf loud-asserting dogmatist,\nWho borrows for the Hand of love\nThe smoking thunderbolts of Jove.\nI know how well the fathers taught,\nWhat work the later schoolmen wrought;\nI reverence old-time faith and men,\nBut God is near us now as then;\nHis force of love is still unspent,\nHis hate of sin as imminent;\nAnd still the measure of our needs\nOutgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;\nThe manna gathered yesterday\nAlready savors of decay;\nDoubts to the world's child-heart unknown\nQuestion us now from star and stone;\nToo little or too much we know,\nAnd sight is swift and faith is slow;\nThe power is lost to self-deceive\nWith shallow forms of make-believe.\nW e walk at high noon, and the bells\nCall to a thousand oracles,\nBut the sound deafens, and the light\nIs stronger than our dazzled sight;\nThe letters of the sacred Book\nGlimmer and swim beneath our look;\nStill struggles in the Age's breast\nWith deepening agony of quest\nThe old entreaty: 'Art thou He,\nOr look we for the Christ to be?'\n\n\"God should be most where man is least\nSo, where is neither church nor priest,\nAnd never rag of form or creed\nTo clothe the nakedness of need,--\nWhere farmer-folk in silence meet,--\nI turn my bell-unsummoned feet;'\nI lay the critic's glass aside,\nI tread upon my lettered pride,\nAnd, lowest-seated, testify\nTo the oneness of humanity;\nConfess the universal want,\nAnd share whatever Heaven may grant.\nHe findeth not who seeks his own,\nThe soul is lost that's saved alone.\nNot on one favored forehead fell\nOf old the fire-tongued miracle,\nBut flamed o'er all the thronging host\nThe baptism of the Holy Ghost;\nHeart answers heart: in one desire\nThe blending lines of prayer aspire;\n'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'\nOur Lord hath said, 'I there will be!'\n\n\"So sometimes comes to soul and sense\nThe feeling which is evidence\nThat very near about us lies\nThe realm of spiritual mysteries.\nThe sphere of the supernal powers\nImpinges on this world of ours.\nThe low and dark horizon lifts,\nTo light the scenic terror shifts;\nThe breath of a diviner air\nBlows down the answer of a prayer\nThat all our sorrow, pain, and doubt\nA great compassion clasps about,\nAnd law and goodness, love and force,\nAre wedded fast beyond divorce.\nThen duty leaves to love its task,\nThe beggar Self forgets to ask;\nWith smile of trust and folded hands,\nThe passive soul in waiting stands\nTo feel, as flowers the sun and dew,\nThe One true Life its own renew.\n\n\"So, to the calmly gathered thought\nThe innermost of truth is taught,\nThe mystery dimly understood,\nThat love of God is love of good,\nAnd, chiefly, its divinest trace\nIn Him of Nazareth's holy face;\nThat to be saved is only this,--\nSalvation from our selfishness,\nFrom more than elemental fire,\nThe soul's unsanetified desire,\nFrom sin itself, and not the pain\nThat warns us of its chafing chain;\nThat worship's deeper meaning lies\nIn mercy, and not sacrifice,\nNot proud humilities of sense\nAnd posturing of penitence,\nBut love's unforced obedience;\nThat Book and Church and Day are given\nFor man, not God,--for earth, not heaven,--\nThe blessed means to holiest ends,\nNot masters, but benignant friends;\nThat the dear Christ dwells not afar,\nThe king of some remoter star,\nListening, at times, with flattered ear\nTo homage wrung from selfish fear,\nBut here, amidst the poor and blind,\nThe bound and suffering of our kind,\nIn works we do, in prayers we pray,\nLife of our life, He lives to-day.\"\n1868.\n\n\n\nTHE CLEAR VISION.\n\nI did but dream. I never knew\nWhat charms our sternest season wore.\nWas never yet the sky so blue,\nWas never earth so white before.\nTill now I never saw the glow\nOf sunset on yon hills of snow,\nAnd never learned the bough's designs\nOf beauty in its leafless lines.\n\nDid ever such a morning break\nAs that my eastern windows see?\nDid ever such a moonlight take\nWeird photographs of shrub and tree?\nRang ever bells so wild and fleet\nThe music of the winter street?\nWas ever yet a sound by half\nSo merry as you school-boy's laugh?\n\nO Earth! with gladness overfraught,\nNo added charm thy face hath found;\nWithin my heart the change is wrought,\nMy footsteps make enchanted ground.\nFrom couch of pain and curtained room\nForth to thy light and air I come,\nTo find in all that meets my eyes\nThe freshness of a glad surprise.\n\nFair seem these winter days, and soon\nShall blow the warm west-winds of spring,\nTo set the unbound rills in tune\nAnd hither urge the bluebird's wing.\nThe vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods\nGrow misty green with leafing buds,\nAnd violets and wind-flowers sway\nAgainst the throbbing heart of May.\n\nBreak forth, my lips, in praise, and own\nThe wiser love severely kind;\nSince, richer for its chastening grown,\nI see, whereas I once was blind.\nThe world, O Father! hath not wronged\nWith loss the life by Thee prolonged;\nBut still, with every added year,\nMore beautiful Thy works appear!\n\nAs Thou hast made thy world without,\nMake Thou more fair my world within;\nShine through its lingering clouds of doubt;\nRebuke its haunting shapes of sin;\nFill, brief or long, my granted span\nOf life with love to thee and man;\nStrike when thou wilt the hour of rest,\nBut let my last days be my best!\n2d mo., 1868.\n\n\n\nDIVINE COMPASSION.\n\nLong since, a dream of heaven I had,\nAnd still the vision haunts me oft;\nI see the saints in white robes clad,\nThe martyrs with their palms aloft;\nBut hearing still, in middle song,\nThe ceaseless dissonance of wrong;\nAnd shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain\nOf sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain.\n\nThe glad song falters to a wail,\nThe harping sinks to low lament;\nBefore the still unlifted veil\nI see the crowned foreheads bent,\nMaking more sweet the heavenly air,\nWith breathings of unselfish prayer;\nAnd a Voice saith: \"O Pity which is pain,\nO Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain!\n\n\"Shall souls redeemed by me refuse\nTo share my sorrow in their turn?\nOr, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse\nOf peace with selfish unconcern?\nHas saintly ease no pitying care?\nHas faith no work, and love no prayer?\nWhile sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell,\nCan heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell?\"\n\nThen through the Gates of Pain, I dream,\nA wind of heaven blows coolly in;\nFainter the awful discords seem,\nThe smoke of torment grows more thin,\nTears quench the burning soil, and thence\nSpring sweet, pale flowers of penitence\nAnd through the dreary realm of man's despair,\nStar-crowned an angel walks, and to! God's hope is there!\n\nIs it a dream? Is heaven so high\nThat pity cannot breathe its air?\nIts happy eyes forever dry,\nIts holy lips without a prayer!\nMy God! my God! if thither led\nBy Thy free grace unmerited,\nNo crown nor palm be mine, but let me keep\nA heart that still can feel, and eyes that still can weep.\n1868.\n\n\n\nTHE PRAYER-SEEKER.\n\nAlong the aisle where prayer was made,\nA woman, all in black arrayed,\nClose-veiled, between the kneeling host,\nWith gliding motion of a ghost,\nPassed to the desk, and laid thereon\nA scroll which bore these words alone,\n_Pray for me_!\n\nBack from the place of worshipping\nShe glided like a guilty thing\nThe rustle of her draperies, stirred\nBy hurrying feet, alone was heard;\nWhile, full of awe, the preacher read,\nAs out into the dark she sped:\n\"_Pray for me_!\"\n\nBack to the night from whence she came,\nTo unimagined grief or shame!\nAcross the threshold of that door\nNone knew the burden that she bore;\nAlone she left the written scroll,\nThe legend of a troubled soul,--\n_Pray for me_!\n\nGlide on, poor ghost of woe or sin!\nThou leav'st a common need within;\nEach bears, like thee, some nameless weight,\nSome misery inarticulate,\nSome secret sin, some shrouded dread,\nSome household sorrow all unsaid.\n_Pray for us_!\n\nPass on! The type of all thou art,\nSad witness to the common heart!\nWith face in veil and seal on lip,\nIn mute and strange companionship,\nLike thee we wander to and fro,\nDumbly imploring as we go\n_Pray for us_!\n\nAh, who shall pray, since he who pleads\nOur want perchance hath greater needs?\nYet they who make their loss the gain\nOf others shall not ask in vain,\nAnd Heaven bends low to hear the prayer\nOf love from lips of self-despair\n_Pray for us_!\n\nIn vain remorse and fear and hate\nBeat with bruised bands against a fate\nWhose walls of iron only move\nAnd open to the touch of love.\nHe only feels his burdens fall\nWho, taught by suffering, pities all.\n_Pray for us_!\n\nHe prayeth best who leaves unguessed\nThe mystery of another's breast.\nWhy cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow,\nOr heads are white, thou need'st not know.\nEnough to note by many a sign\nThat every heart hath needs like thine.\n_Pray for us_!\n1870\n\n\n\nTHE BREWING OF SOMA.\n\n     \"These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra:\n     offer Soma to the drinker of Soma.\"\n     --Vashista, translated by MAX MULLER.\n\nThe fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke\nUp through the green wood curled;\n\"Bring honey from the hollow oak,\nBring milky sap,\" the brewers spoke,\nIn the childhood of the world.\n\nAnd brewed they well or brewed they ill,\nThe priests thrust in their rods,\nFirst tasted, and then drank their fill,\nAnd shouted, with one voice and will,\n\"Behold the drink of gods!\"\n\nThey drank, and to! in heart and brain\nA new, glad life began;\nThe gray of hair grew young again,\nThe sick man laughed away his pain,\nThe cripple leaped and ran.\n\n\"Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,\nForget your long annoy.\"\nSo sang the priests. From tent to tent\nThe Soma's sacred madness went,\nA storm of drunken joy.\n\nThen knew each rapt inebriate\nA winged and glorious birth,\nSoared upward, with strange joy elate,\nBeat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,\nAnd, sobered, sank to earth.\n\nThe land with Soma's praises rang;\nOn Gihon's banks of shade\nIts hymns the dusky maidens sang;\nIn joy of life or mortal pang\nAll men to Soma prayed.\n\nThe morning twilight of the race\nSends down these matin psalms;\nAnd still with wondering eyes we trace\nThe simple prayers to Soma's grace,\nThat Vedic verse embalms.\n\nAs in that child-world's early year,\nEach after age has striven\nBy music, incense, vigils drear,\nAnd trance, to bring the skies more near,\nOr lift men up to heaven!\n\nSome fever of the blood and brain,\nSome self-exalting spell,\nThe scourger's keen delight of pain,\nThe Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,\nThe wild-haired Bacchant's yell,--\n\nThe desert's hair-grown hermit sunk\nThe saner brute below;\nThe naked Santon, hashish-drunk,\nThe cloister madness of the monk,\nThe fakir's torture-show!\n\nAnd yet the past comes round again,\nAnd new doth old fulfil;\nIn sensual transports wild as vain\nWe brew in many a Christian fane\nThe heathen Soma still!\n\nDear Lord and Father of mankind,\nForgive our foolish ways!\nReclothe us in our rightful mind,\nIn purer lives Thy service find,\nIn deeper reverence, praise.\n\nIn simple trust like theirs who heard\nBeside the Syrian sea\nThe gracious calling of the Lord,\nLet us, like them, without a word,\nRise up and follow Thee.\n\nO Sabbath rest by Galilee!\nO calm of hills above,\nWhere Jesus knelt to share with Thee\nThe silence of eternity\nInterpreted by love!\n\nWith that deep hush subduing all\nOur words and works that drown\nThe tender whisper of Thy call,\nAs noiseless let Thy blessing fall\nAs fell Thy manna down.\n\nDrop Thy still dews of quietness,\nTill all our strivings cease;\nTake from our souls the strain and stress,\nAnd let our ordered lives confess\nThe beauty of Thy peace.\n\nBreathe through the heats of our desire\nThy coolness and Thy balm;\nLet sense be dumb, let flesh retire;\nSpeak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,\nO still, small voice of calm!\n1872.\n\n\n\nA WOMAN.\n\nOh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill,\nBehold! thou art a woman still!\nAnd, by that sacred name and dear,\nI bid thy better self appear.\nStill, through thy foul disguise, I see\nThe rudimental purity,\nThat, spite of change and loss, makes good\nThy birthright-claim of womanhood;\nAn inward loathing, deep, intense;\nA shame that is half innocence.\nCast off the grave-clothes of thy sin!\nRise from the dust thou liest in,\nAs Mary rose at Jesus' word,\nRedeemed and white before the Lord!\nReclairn thy lost soul! In His name,\nRise up, and break thy bonds of shame.\nArt weak? He 's strong. Art fearful? Hear\nThe world's O'ercomer: \"Be of cheer!\"\nWhat lip shall judge when He approves?\nWho dare to scorn the child He loves?\n\n\n\nTHE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.\n\n     The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by Mr. John\n     Anderson to Agassiz for the uses of a summer school of natural\n     history. A large barn was cleared and improvised as a lecture-room.\n     Here, on the first morning of the school, all the company was\n     gathered. \"Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises,\" says\n     Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis Agassiz; his Life and Correspondence,\n     \"trusting to the interest of the occasion to suggest what might best\n     be said or done. But, as he looked upon his pupils gathered there\n     to study nature with him, by an impulse as natural as it was\n     unpremeditated, he called upon then to join in silently asking\n     God's blessing on their work together. The pause was broken by the\n     first words of an address no less fervent than its unspoken\n     prelude.\" This was in the summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the\n     December following.\n\nOn the isle of Penikese,\nRinged about by sapphire seas,\nFanned by breezes salt and cool,\nStood the Master with his school.\nOver sails that not in vain\nWooed the west-wind's steady strain,\nLine of coast that low and far\nStretched its undulating bar,\nWings aslant along the rim\nOf the waves they stooped to skim,\nRock and isle and glistening bay,\nFell the beautiful white day.\n\nSaid the Master to the youth\n\"We have come in search of truth,\nTrying with uncertain key\nDoor by door of mystery;\nWe are reaching, through His laws,\nTo the garment-hem of Cause,\nHim, the endless, unbegun,\nThe Unnamable, the One\nLight of all our light the Source,\nLife of life, and Force of force.\nAs with fingers of the blind,\nWe are groping here to find\nWhat the hieroglyphics mean\nOf the Unseen in the seen,\nWhat the Thought which underlies\nNature's masking and disguise,\nWhat it is that hides beneath\nBlight and bloom and birth and death.\nBy past efforts unavailing,\nDoubt and error, loss and failing,\nOf our weakness made aware,\nOn the threshold of our task\nLet us light and guidance ask,\nLet us pause in silent prayer!\"\n\nThen the Master in his place\nBowed his head a little space,\nAnd the leaves by soft airs stirred,\nLapse of wave and cry of bird,\nLeft the solemn hush unbroken\nOf that wordless prayer unspoken,\nWhile its wish, on earth unsaid,\nRose to heaven interpreted.\nAs, in life's best hours, we hear\nBy the spirit's finer ear\nHis low voice within us, thus\nThe All-Father heareth us;\nAnd His holy ear we pain\nWith our noisy words and vain.\nNot for Him our violence\nStorming at the gates of sense,\nHis the primal language, His\nThe eternal silences!\n\nEven the careless heart was moved,\nAnd the doubting gave assent,\nWith a gesture reverent,\nTo the Master well-beloved.\nAs thin mists are glorified\nBy the light they cannot hide,\nAll who gazed upon him saw,\nThrough its veil of tender awe,\nHow his face was still uplit\nBy the old sweet look of it.\nHopeful, trustful, full of cheer,\nAnd the love that casts out fear.\nWho the secret may declare\nOf that brief, unuttered prayer?\nDid the shade before him come\nOf th' inevitable doom,\nOf the end of earth so near,\nAnd Eternity's new year?\n\nIn the lap of sheltering seas\nRests the isle of Penikese;\nBut the lord of the domain\nComes not to his own again\nWhere the eyes that follow fail,\nOn a vaster sea his sail\nDrifts beyond our beck and hail.\nOther lips within its bound\nShall the laws of life expound;\nOther eyes from rock and shell\nRead the world's old riddles well\nBut when breezes light and bland\nBlow from Summer's blossomed land,\nWhen the air is glad with wings,\nAnd the blithe song-sparrow sings,\nMany an eye with his still face\nShall the living ones displace,\nMany an ear the word shall seek\nHe alone could fitly speak.\nAnd one name forevermore\nShall be uttered o'er and o'er\nBy the waves that kiss the shore,\nBy the curlew's whistle sent\nDown the cool, sea-scented air;\nIn all voices known to her,\nNature owns her worshipper,\nHalf in triumph, half lament.\nThither Love shall tearful turn,\nFriendship pause uncovered there,\nAnd the wisest reverence learn\nFrom the Master's silent prayer.\n1873.\n\n\n\nIN QUEST\n\nHave I not voyaged, friend beloved, with thee\nOn the great waters of the unsounded sea,\nMomently listening with suspended oar\nFor the low rote of waves upon a shore\nChangeless as heaven, where never fog-cloud drifts\nOver its windless wood, nor mirage lifts\nThe steadfast hills; where never birds of doubt\nSing to mislead, and every dream dies out,\nAnd the dark riddles which perplex us here\nIn the sharp solvent of its light are clear?\nThou knowest how vain our quest; how, soon or late,\nThe baffling tides and circles of debate\nSwept back our bark unto its starting-place,\nWhere, looking forth upon the blank, gray space,\nAnd round about us seeing, with sad eyes,\nThe same old difficult hills and cloud-cold skies,\nWe said: \"This outward search availeth not\nTo find Him. He is farther than we thought,\nOr, haply, nearer. To this very spot\nWhereon we wait, this commonplace of home,\nAs to the well of Jacob, He may come\nAnd tell us all things.\" As I listened there,\nThrough the expectant silences of prayer,\nSomewhat I seemed to hear, which hath to me\nBeen hope, strength, comfort, and I give it thee.\n\n\"The riddle of the world is understood\nOnly by him who feels that God is good,\nAs only he can feel who makes his love\nThe ladder of his faith, and climbs above\nOn th' rounds of his best instincts; draws no line\nBetween mere human goodness and divine,\nBut, judging God by what in him is best,\nWith a child's trust leans on a Father's breast,\nAnd hears unmoved the old creeds babble still\nOf kingly power and dread caprice of will,\nChary of blessing, prodigal of curse,\nThe pitiless doomsman of the universe.\nCan Hatred ask for love? Can Selfishness\nInvite to self-denial? Is He less\nThan man in kindly dealing? Can He break\nHis own great law of fatherhood, forsake\nAnd curse His children? Not for earth and heaven\nCan separate tables of the law be given.\nNo rule can bind which He himself denies;\nThe truths of time are not eternal lies.\"\n\nSo heard I; and the chaos round me spread\nTo light and order grew; and, \"Lord,\" I said,\n\"Our sins are our tormentors, worst of all\nFelt in distrustful shame that dares not call\nUpon Thee as our Father. We have set\nA strange god up, but Thou remainest yet.\nAll that I feel of pity Thou hast known\nBefore I was; my best is all Thy own.\nFrom Thy great heart of goodness mine but drew\nWishes and prayers; but Thou, O Lord, wilt do,\nIn Thy own time, by ways I cannot see,\nAll that I feel when I am nearest Thee!\"\n1873.\n\n\n\nTHE FRIEND'S BURIAL.\n\nMy thoughts are all in yonder town,\nWhere, wept by many tears,\nTo-day my mother's friend lays down\nThe burden of her years.\n\nTrue as in life, no poor disguise\nOf death with her is seen,\nAnd on her simple casket lies\nNo wreath of bloom and green.\n\nOh, not for her the florist's art,\nThe mocking weeds of woe;\nDear memories in each mourner's heart\nLike heaven's white lilies blow.\n\nAnd all about the softening air\nOf new-born sweetness tells,\nAnd the ungathered May-flowers wear\nThe tints of ocean shells.\n\nThe old, assuring miracle\nIs fresh as heretofore;\nAnd earth takes up its parable\nOf life from death once more.\n\nHere organ-swell and church-bell toll\nMethinks but discord were;\nThe prayerful silence of the soul\nIs best befitting her.\n\nNo sound should break the quietude\nAlike of earth and sky\nO wandering wind in Seabrook wood,\nBreathe but a half-heard sigh!\n\nSing softly, spring-bird, for her sake;\nAnd thou not distant sea,\nLapse lightly as if Jesus spake,\nAnd thou wert Galilee!\n\nFor all her quiet life flowed on\nAs meadow streamlets flow,\nWhere fresher green reveals alone\nThe noiseless ways they go.\n\nFrom her loved place of prayer I see\nThe plain-robed mourners pass,\nWith slow feet treading reverently\nThe graveyard's springing grass.\n\nMake room, O mourning ones, for me,\nWhere, like the friends of Paul,\nThat you no more her face shall see\nYou sorrow most of all.\n\nHer path shall brighten more and more\nUnto the perfect day;\nShe cannot fail of peace who bore\nSuch peace with her away.\n\nO sweet, calm face that seemed to wear\nThe look of sins forgiven!\nO voice of prayer that seemed to bear\nOur own needs up to heaven!\n\nHow reverent in our midst she stood,\nOr knelt in grateful praise!\nWhat grace of Christian womanhood\nWas in her household ways!\n\nFor still her holy living meant\nNo duty left undone;\nThe heavenly and the human blent\nTheir kindred loves in one.\n\nAnd if her life small leisure found\nFor feasting ear and eye,\nAnd Pleasure, on her daily round,\nShe passed unpausing by,\n\nYet with her went a secret sense\nOf all things sweet and fair,\nAnd Beauty's gracious providence\nRefreshed her unaware.\n\nShe kept her line of rectitude\nWith love's unconscious ease;\nHer kindly instincts understood\nAll gentle courtesies.\n\nAn inborn charm of graciousness\nMade sweet her smile and tone,\nAnd glorified her farm-wife dress\nWith beauty not its own.\n\nThe dear Lord's best interpreters\nAre humble human souls;\nThe Gospel of a life like hers\nIs more than books or scrolls.\n\nFrom scheme and creed the light goes out,\nThe saintly fact survives;\nThe blessed Master none can doubt\nRevealed in holy lives.\n1873.\n\n\n\nA CHRISTMAS CARMEN.\n\nI.\nSound over all waters, reach out from all lands,\nThe chorus of voices, the clasping of hands;\nSing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,\nSing songs of the angels when Jesus was born!\nWith glad jubilations\nBring hope to the nations\nThe dark night is ending and dawn has begun\nRise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,\nAll speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!\n\nII.\nSing the bridal of nations! with chorals of love\nSing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove,\nTill the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord,\nAnd the voice of the world is the voice of the Lord!\nClasp hands of the nations\nIn strong gratulations:\nThe dark night is ending and dawn has begun;\nRise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,\nAll speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!\n\nIII.\nBlow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;\nEast, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease\nSing the song of great joy that the angels began,\nSing of glory to God and of good-will to man!\nHark! joining in chorus\nThe heavens bend o'er us'\nThe dark night is ending and dawn has begun;\nRise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,\nAll speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!\n1873.\n\n\n\nVESTA.\n\nO Christ of God! whose life and death\nOur own have reconciled,\nMost quietly, most tenderly\nTake home Thy star-named child!\n\nThy grace is in her patient eyes,\nThy words are on her tongue;\nThe very silence round her seems\nAs if the angels sung.\n\nHer smile is as a listening child's\nWho hears its mother call;\nThe lilies of Thy perfect peace\nAbout her pillow fall.\n\nShe leans from out our clinging arms\nTo rest herself in Thine;\nAlone to Thee, dear Lord, can we\nOur well-beloved resign!\n\nOh, less for her than for ourselves\nWe bow our heads and pray;\nHer setting star, like Bethlehem's,\nTo Thee shall point the way!\n1874.\n\n\n\nCHILD-SONGS.\n\nStill linger in our noon of time\nAnd on our Saxon tongue\nThe echoes of the home-born hymns\nThe Aryan mothers sung.\n\nAnd childhood had its litanies\nIn every age and clime;\nThe earliest cradles of the race\nWere rocked to poet's rhyme.\n\nNor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,\nNor green earth's virgin sod,\nSo moved the singer's heart of old\nAs these small ones of God.\n\nThe mystery of unfolding life\nWas more than dawning morn,\nThan opening flower or crescent moon\nThe human soul new-born.\n\nAnd still to childhood's sweet appeal\nThe heart of genius turns,\nAnd more than all the sages teach\nFrom lisping voices learns,--\n\nThe voices loved of him who sang,\nWhere Tweed and Teviot glide,\nThat sound to-day on all the winds\nThat blow from Rydal-side,--\n\nHeard in the Teuton's household songs,\nAnd folk-lore of the Finn,\nWhere'er to holy Christmas hearths\nThe Christ-child enters in!\n\nBefore life's sweetest mystery still\nThe heart in reverence kneels;\nThe wonder of the primal birth\nThe latest mother feels.\n\nWe need love's tender lessons taught\nAs only weakness can;\nGod hath His small interpreters;\nThe child must teach the man.\n\nWe wander wide through evil years,\nOur eyes of faith grow dim;\nBut he is freshest from His hands\nAnd nearest unto Him!\n\nAnd haply, pleading long with Him\nFor sin-sick hearts and cold,\nThe angels of our childhood still\nThe Father's face behold.\n\nOf such the kingdom!--Teach Thou us,\nO-Master most divine,\nTo feel the deep significance\nOf these wise words of Thine!\n\nThe haughty eye shall seek in vain\nWhat innocence beholds;\nNo cunning finds the key of heaven,\nNo strength its gate unfolds.\n\nAlone to guilelessness and love\nThat gate shall open fall;\nThe mind of pride is nothingness,\nThe childlike heart is all!\n1875.\n\n\n\nTHE HEALER.\n\n     TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S PICTURE OF CHRIST\n     HEALING THE SICK.\n\nSo stood of old the holy Christ\nAmidst the suffering throng;\nWith whom His lightest touch sufficed\nTo make the weakest strong.\n\nThat healing gift He lends to them\nWho use it in His name;\nThe power that filled His garment's hem\nIs evermore the same.\n\nFor lo! in human hearts unseen\nThe Healer dwelleth still,\nAnd they who make His temples clean\nThe best subserve His will.\n\nThe holiest task by Heaven decreed,\nAn errand all divine,\nThe burden of our common need\nTo render less is thine.\n\nThe paths of pain are thine. Go forth\nWith patience, trust, and hope;\nThe sufferings of a sin-sick earth\nShall give thee ample scope.\n\nBeside the unveiled mysteries\nOf life and death go stand,\nWith guarded lips and reverent eyes\nAnd pure of heart and hand.\n\nSo shalt thou be with power endued\nFrom Him who went about\nThe Syrian hillsides doing good,\nAnd casting demons out.\n\nThat Good Physician liveth yet\nThy friend and guide to be;\nThe Healer by Gennesaret\nShall walk the rounds with thee.\n\n\n\nTHE TWO ANGELS.\n\nGod called the nearest angels who dwell with Him above:\nThe tenderest one was Pity, the dearest one was Love.\n\n\"Arise,\" He said, \"my angels! a wail of woe and sin\nSteals through the gates of heaven, and saddens all within.\n\n\"My harps take up the mournful strain that from a lost world swells,\nThe smoke of torment clouds the light and blights the asphodels.\n\n\"Fly downward to that under world, and on its souls of pain\nLet Love drop smiles like sunshine, and Pity tears like rain!\"\n\nTwo faces bowed before the Throne, veiled in their golden hair;\nFour white wings lessened swiftly down the dark abyss of air.\n\nThe way was strange, the flight was long; at last the angels came\nWhere swung the lost and nether world, red-wrapped in rayless flame.\n\nThere Pity, shuddering, wept; but Love, with faith too strong for fear,\nTook heart from God's almightiness and smiled a smile of cheer.\n\nAnd lo! that tear of Pity quenched the flame whereon it fell,\nAnd, with the sunshine of that smile, hope entered into hell!\n\nTwo unveiled faces full of joy looked upward to the Throne,\nFour white wings folded at the feet of Him who sat thereon!\n\nAnd deeper than the sound of seas, more soft than falling flake,\nAmidst the hush of wing and song the Voice Eternal spake:\n\n\"Welcome, my angels! ye have brought a holier joy to heaven;\nHenceforth its sweetest song shall be the song of sin forgiven!\"\n1875.\n\n\n\nOVERRULED.\n\nThe threads our hands in blindness spin\nNo self-determined plan weaves in;\nThe shuttle of the unseen powers\nWorks out a pattern not as ours.\n\nAh! small the choice of him who sings\nWhat sound shall leave the smitten strings;\nFate holds and guides the hand of art;\nThe singer's is the servant's part.\n\nThe wind-harp chooses not the tone\nThat through its trembling threads is blown;\nThe patient organ cannot guess\nWhat hand its passive keys shall press.\n\nThrough wish, resolve, and act, our will\nIs moved by undreamed forces still;\nAnd no man measures in advance\nHis strength with untried circumstance.\n\nAs streams take hue from shade and sun,\nAs runs the life the song must run;\nBut, glad or sad, to His good end\nGod grant the varying notes may tend!\n1877.\n\n\n\nHYMN OF THE DUNKERS\n\nKLOSTER KEDAR, EPHRATA, PENNSYLVANIA (1738)\n\nSISTER MARIA CHRISTINA sings\n\nWake, sisters, wake! the day-star shines;\nAbove Ephrata's eastern pines\nThe dawn is breaking, cool and calm.\nWake, sisters, wake to prayer and psalm!\n\nPraised be the Lord for shade and light,\nFor toil by day, for rest by night!\nPraised be His name who deigns to bless\nOur Kedar of the wilderness!\n\nOur refuge when the spoiler's hand\nWas heavy on our native land;\nAnd freedom, to her children due,\nThe wolf and vulture only knew.\n\nWe praised Him when to prison led,\nWe owned Him when the stake blazed red;\nWe knew, whatever might befall,\nHis love and power were over all.\n\nHe heard our prayers; with outstretched arm\nHe led us forth from cruel harm;\nStill, wheresoe'er our steps were bent,\nHis cloud and fire before us went!\n\nThe watch of faith and prayer He set,\nWe kept it then, we keep it yet.\nAt midnight, crow of cock, or noon,\nHe cometh sure, He cometh soon.\n\nHe comes to chasten, not destroy,\nTo purge the earth from sin's alloy.\nAt last, at last shall all confess\nHis mercy as His righteousness.\n\nThe dead shall live, the sick be whole,\nThe scarlet sin be white as wool;\nNo discord mar below, above,\nThe music of eternal love!\n\nSound, welcome trump, the last alarm!\nLord God of hosts, make bare thine arm,\nFulfil this day our long desire,\nMake sweet and clean the world with fire!\n\nSweep, flaming besom, sweep from sight\nThe lies of time; be swift to smite,\nSharp sword of God, all idols down,\nGenevan creed and Roman crown.\n\nQuake, earth, through all thy zones, till all\nThe fanes of pride and priesteraft fall;\nAnd lift thou up in place of them\nThy gates of pearl, Jerusalem!\n\nLo! rising from baptismal flame,\nTransfigured, glorious, yet the same,\nWithin the heavenly city's bound\nOur Kloster Kedar shall be found.\n\nHe cometh soon! at dawn or noon\nOr set of sun, He cometh soon.\nOur prayers shall meet Him on His way;\nWake, sisters, wake! arise and pray!\n1877.\n\n\n\nGIVING AND TAKING.\n\n     I have attempted to put in English verse a prose translation of a\n     poem by Tinnevaluva, a Hindoo poet of the third century of our era.\n\nWho gives and hides the giving hand,\nNor counts on favor, fame, or praise,\nShall find his smallest gift outweighs\nThe burden of the sea and land.\n\nWho gives to whom hath naught been given,\nHis gift in need, though small indeed\nAs is the grass-blade's wind-blown seed,\nIs large as earth and rich as heaven.\n\nForget it not, O man, to whom\nA gift shall fall, while yet on earth;\nYea, even to thy seven-fold birth\nRecall it in the lives to come.\n\nWho broods above a wrong in thought\nSins much; but greater sin is his\nWho, fed and clothed with kindnesses,\nShall count the holy alms as nought.\n\nWho dares to curse the hands that bless\nShall know of sin the deadliest cost;\nThe patience of the heavens is lost\nBeholding man's unthankfulness.\n\nFor he who breaks all laws may still\nIn Sivam's mercy be forgiven;\nBut none can save, in earth or heaven,\nThe wretch who answers good with ill.\n1877.\n\n\n\nTHE VISION OF ECHARD.\n\nThe Benedictine Echard\nSat by the wayside well,\nWhere Marsberg sees the bridal\nOf the Sarre and the Moselle.\n\nFair with its sloping vineyards\nAnd tawny chestnut bloom,\nThe happy vale Ausonius sunk\nFor holy Treves made room.\n\nOn the shrine Helena builded\nTo keep the Christ coat well,\nOn minster tower and kloster cross,\nThe westering sunshine fell.\n\nThere, where the rock-hewn circles\nO'erlooked the Roman's game,\nThe veil of sleep fell on him,\nAnd his thought a dream became.\n\nHe felt the heart of silence\nThrob with a soundless word,\nAnd by the inward ear alone\nA spirit's voice he heard.\n\nAnd the spoken word seemed written\nOn air and wave and sod,\nAnd the bending walls of sapphire\nBlazed with the thought of God.\n\n\"What lack I, O my children?\nAll things are in my band;\nThe vast earth and the awful stars\nI hold as grains of sand.\n\n\"Need I your alms? The silver\nAnd gold are mine alone;\nThe gifts ye bring before me\nWere evermore my own.\n\n\"Heed I the noise of viols,\nYour pomp of masque and show?\nHave I not dawns and sunsets\nHave I not winds that blow?\n\n\"Do I smell your gums of incense?\nIs my ear with chantings fed?\nTaste I your wine of worship,\nOr eat your holy bread?\n\n\"Of rank and name and honors\nAm I vain as ye are vain?\nWhat can Eternal Fulness\nFrom your lip-service gain?\n\n\"Ye make me not your debtor\nWho serve yourselves alone;\nYe boast to me of homage\nWhose gain is all your own.\n\n\"For you I gave the prophets,\nFor you the Psalmist's lay\nFor you the law's stone tables,\nAnd holy book and day.\n\n\"Ye change to weary burdens\nThe helps that should uplift;\nYe lose in form the spirit,\nThe Giver in the gift.\n\n\"Who called ye to self-torment,\nTo fast and penance vain?\nDream ye Eternal Goodness\nHas joy in mortal pain?\n\n\"For the death in life of Nitria,\nFor your Chartreuse ever dumb,\nWhat better is the neighbor,\nOr happier the home?\n\n\"Who counts his brother's welfare\nAs sacred as his own,\nAnd loves, forgives, and pities,\nHe serveth me alone.\n\n\"I note each gracious purpose,\nEach kindly word and deed;\nAre ye not all my children?\nShall not the Father heed?\n\n\"No prayer for light and guidance\nIs lost upon mine ear\nThe child's cry in the darkness\nShall not the Father hear?\n\n\"I loathe your wrangling councils,\nI tread upon your creeds;\nWho made ye mine avengers,\nOr told ye of my needs;\n\n\"I bless men and ye curse them,\nI love them and ye hate;\nYe bite and tear each other,\nI suffer long and wait.\n\n\"Ye bow to ghastly symbols,\nTo cross and scourge and thorn;\nYe seek his Syrian manger\nWho in the heart is born.\n\n\"For the dead Christ, not the living,\nYe watch His empty grave,\nWhose life alone within you\nHas power to bless and save.\n\n\"O blind ones, outward groping,\nThe idle quest forego;\nWho listens to His inward voice\nAlone of Him shall know.\n\n\"His love all love exceeding\nThe heart must needs recall,\nIts self-surrendering freedom,\nIts loss that gaineth all.\n\n\"Climb not the holy mountains,\nTheir eagles know not me;\nSeek not the Blessed Islands,\nI dwell not in the sea.\n\n\"Gone is the mount of Meru,\nThe triple gods are gone,\nAnd, deaf to all the lama's prayers,\nThe Buddha slumbers on.\n\n\"No more from rocky Horeb\nThe smitten waters gush;\nFallen is Bethel's ladder,\nQuenched is the burning bush.\n\n\"The jewels of the Urim\nAnd Thurnmim all are dim;\nThe fire has left the altar,\nThe sign the teraphim.\n\n\"No more in ark or hill grove\nThe Holiest abides;\nNot in the scroll's dead letter\nThe eternal secret hides.\n\n\"The eye shall fail that searches\nFor me the hollow sky;\nThe far is even as the near,\nThe low is as the high.\n\n\"What if the earth is hiding\nHer old faiths, long outworn?\nWhat is it to the changeless truth\nThat yours shall fail in turn?\n\n\"What if the o'erturned altar\nLays bare the ancient lie?\nWhat if the dreams and legends\nOf the world's childhood die?\n\n\"Have ye not still my witness\nWithin yourselves alway,\nMy hand that on the keys of life\nFor bliss or bale I lay?\n\n\"Still, in perpetual judgment,\nI hold assize within,\nWith sure reward of holiness,\nAnd dread rebuke of sin.\n\n\"A light, a guide, a warning,\nA presence ever near,\nThrough the deep silence of the flesh\nI reach the inward ear.\n\n\"My Gerizim and Ebal\nAre in each human soul,\nThe still, small voice of blessing,\nAnd Sinai's thunder-roll.\n\n\"The stern behest of duty,\nThe doom-book open thrown,\nThe heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear,\nAre with yourselves alone.\"\n\n     .    .    .    .    .\n\nA gold and purple sunset\nFlowed down the broad Moselle;\nOn hills of vine and meadow lands\nThe peace of twilight fell.\n\nA slow, cool wind of evening\nBlew over leaf and bloom;\nAnd, faint and far, the Angelus\nRang from Saint Matthew's tomb.\n\nThen up rose Master Echard,\nAnd marvelled: \"Can it be\nThat here, in dream and vision,\nThe Lord hath talked with me?\"\n\nHe went his way; behind him\nThe shrines of saintly dead,\nThe holy coat and nail of cross,\nHe left unvisited.\n\nHe sought the vale of Eltzbach\nHis burdened soul to free,\nWhere the foot-hills of the Eifel\nAre glassed in Laachersee.\n\nAnd, in his Order's kloster,\nHe sat, in night-long parle,\nWith Tauler of the Friends of God,\nAnd Nicolas of Basle.\n\nAnd lo! the twain made answer\n\"Yea, brother, even thus\nThe Voice above all voices\nHath spoken unto us.\n\n\"The world will have its idols,\nAnd flesh and sense their sign\nBut the blinded eyes shall open,\nAnd the gross ear be fine.\n\n\"What if the vision tarry?\nGod's time is always best;\nThe true Light shall be witnessed,\nThe Christ within confessed.\n\n\"In mercy or in judgment\nHe shall turn and overturn,\nTill the heart shall be His temple\nWhere all of Him shall learn.\"\n\n\n\nINSCRIPTIONS.\n\nON A SUN-DIAL.\n\nFOR DR. HENRY I. BOWDITCH.\n\nWith warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight\nFrom life's glad morning to its solemn night;\nYet, through the dear God's love, I also show\nThere's Light above me by the Shade below.\n1879.\n\n\n\nON A FOUNTAIN.\n\nFOR DOROTHEA L. DIX.\n\nStranger and traveller,\nDrink freely and bestow\nA kindly thought on her\nWho bade this fountain flow,\nYet hath no other claim\nThan as the minister\nOf blessing in God's name.\nDrink, and in His peace go\n1879\n\n\nTHE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER.\n\nIn the minister's morning sermon\nHe had told of the primal fall,\nAnd how thenceforth the wrath of God\nRested on each and all.\n\nAnd how of His will and pleasure,\nAll souls, save a chosen few,\nWere doomed to the quenchless burning,\nAnd held in the way thereto.\n\nYet never by faith's unreason\nA saintlier soul was tried,\nAnd never the harsh old lesson\nA tenderer heart belied.\n\nAnd, after the painful service\nOn that pleasant Sabbath day,\nHe walked with his little daughter\nThrough the apple-bloom of May.\n\nSweet in the fresh green meadows\nSparrow and blackbird sung;\nAbove him their tinted petals\nThe blossoming orchards hung.\n\nAround on the wonderful glory\nThe minister looked and smiled;\n\"How good is the Lord who gives us\nThese gifts from His hand, my child.\n\n\"Behold in the bloom of apples\nAnd the violets in the sward\nA hint of the old, lost beauty\nOf the Garden of the Lord!\"\n\nThen up spake the little maiden,\nTreading on snow and pink\n\"O father! these pretty blossoms\nAre very wicked, I think.\n\n\"Had there been no Garden of Eden\nThere never had been a fall;\nAnd if never a tree had blossomed\nGod would have loved us all.\"\n\n\"Hush, child!\" the father answered,\n\"By His decree man fell;\nHis ways are in clouds and darkness,\nBut He doeth all things well.\n\n\"And whether by His ordaining\nTo us cometh good or ill,\nJoy or pain, or light or shadow,\nWe must fear and love Him still.\"\n\n\"Oh, I fear Him!\" said the daughter,\n\"And I try to love Him, too;\nBut I wish He was good and gentle,\nKind and loving as you.\"\n\nThe minister groaned in spirit\nAs the tremulous lips of pain\nAnd wide, wet eyes uplifted\nQuestioned his own in vain.\n\nBowing his head he pondered\nThe words of the little one;\nHad he erred in his life-long teaching?\nHad he wrong to his Master done?\n\nTo what grim and dreadful idol\nHad he lent the holiest name?\nDid his own heart, loving and human,\nThe God of his worship shame?\n\nAnd lo! from the bloom and greenness,\nFrom the tender skies above,\nAnd the face of his little daughter,\nHe read a lesson of love.\n\nNo more as the cloudy terror\nOf Sinai's mount of law,\nBut as Christ in the Syrian lilies\nThe vision of God he saw.\n\nAnd, as when, in the clefts of Horeb,\nOf old was His presence known,\nThe dread Ineffable Glory\nWas Infinite Goodness alone.\n\nThereafter his hearers noted\nIn his prayers a tenderer strain,\nAnd never the gospel of hatred\nBurned on his lips again.\n\nAnd the scoffing tongue was prayerful,\nAnd the blinded eyes found sight,\nAnd hearts, as flint aforetime,\nGrew soft in his warmth and light.\n1880.\n\n\n\nBY THEIR WORKS.\n\nCall him not heretic whose works attest\nHis faith in goodness by no creed confessed.\nWhatever in love's name is truly done\nTo free the bound and lift the fallen one\nIs done to Christ. Whoso in deed and word\nIs not against Him labors for our Lord.\nWhen He, who, sad and weary, longing sore\nFor love's sweet service, sought the sisters' door,\nOne saw the heavenly, one the human guest,\nBut who shall say which loved the Master best?\n1881.\n\n\n\nTHE WORD.\n\nVoice of the Holy Spirit, making known\nMan to himself, a witness swift and sure,\nWarning, approving, true and wise and pure,\nCounsel and guidance that misleadeth none!\nBy thee the mystery of life is read;\nThe picture-writing of the world's gray seers,\nThe myths and parables of the primal years,\nWhose letter kills, by thee interpreted\nTake healthful meanings fitted to our needs,\nAnd in the soul's vernacular express\nThe common law of simple righteousness.\nHatred of cant and doubt of human creeds\nMay well be felt: the unpardonable sin\nIs to deny the Word of God within!\n1881.\n\n\n\nTHE BOOK.\n\nGallery of sacred pictures manifold,\nA minster rich in holy effigies,\nAnd bearing on entablature and frieze\nThe hieroglyphic oracles of old.\nAlong its transept aureoled martyrs sit;\nAnd the low chancel side-lights half acquaint\nThe eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint,\nTheir age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ!\nBut only when on form and word obscure\nFalls from above the white supernal light\nWe read the mystic characters aright,\nAnd life informs the silent portraiture,\nUntil we pause at last, awe-held, before\nThe One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore.\n1881\n\n\n\nREQUIREMENT.\n\nWe live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave\nOf text and legend. Reason's voice and God's,\nNature's and Duty's, never are at odds.\nWhat asks our Father of His children, save\nJustice and mercy and humility,\nA reasonable service of good deeds,\nPure living, tenderness to human needs,\nReverence and trust, and prayer for light to see\nThe Master's footprints in our daily ways?\nNo knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,\nBut the calm beauty of an ordered life\nWhose very breathing is unworded praise!--\nA life that stands as all true lives have stood,\nFirm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.\n1881.\n\n\n\nHELP.\n\nDream not, O Soul, that easy is the task\nThus set before thee. If it proves at length,\nAs well it may, beyond thy natural strength,\nFaint not, despair not. As a child may ask\nA father, pray the Everlasting Good\nFor light and guidance midst the subtle snares\nOf sin thick planted in life's thoroughfares,\nFor spiritual strength and moral hardihood;\nStill listening, through the noise of time and sense,\nTo the still whisper of the Inward Word;\nBitter in blame, sweet in approval heard,\nItself its own confirming evidence\nTo health of soul a voice to cheer and please,\nTo guilt the wrath of the Eumenides.\n1881.\n\n\n\nUTTERANCE.\nBut what avail inadequate words to reach\nThe innermost of Truth? Who shall essay,\nBlinded and weak, to point and lead the way,\nOr solve the mystery in familiar speech?\nYet, if it be that something not thy own,\nSome shadow of the Thought to which our schemes,\nCreeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams,\nIs even to thy unworthiness made known,\nThou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare\nTo utter lightly, lest on lips of thine\nThe real seem false, the beauty undivine.\nSo, weighing duty in the scale of prayer,\nGive what seems given thee. It may prove a seed\nOf goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need.\n1881.\n\n\n\nORIENTAL MAXIMS.\n\nPARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLATIONS.\n\nTHE INWARD JUDGE.\n\nFrom Institutes of Manu.\n\nThe soul itself its awful witness is.\nSay not in evil doing, \"No one sees,\"\nAnd so offend the conscious One within,\nWhose ear can hear the silences of sin.\n\nEre they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see\nThe secret motions of iniquity.\nNor in thy folly say, \"I am alone.\"\nFor, seated in thy heart, as on a throne,\nThe ancient Judge and Witness liveth still,\nTo note thy act and thought; and as thy ill\nOr good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach,\nThe solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each.\n1878.\n\n\n\nLAYING UP TREASURE\n\nFrom the Mahabharata.\n\nBefore the Ender comes, whose charioteer\nIs swift or slow Disease, lay up each year\nThy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings\nNor thieves can take away. When all the things\nThou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall,\nThou in thy virtue shalt survive them all.\n1881.\n\n\n\nCONDUCT\n\nFrom the Mahabharata.\n\nHeed how thou livest. Do no act by day\nWhich from the night shall drive thy peace away.\nIn months of sun so live that months of rain\nShall still be happy. Evermore restrain\nEvil and cherish good, so shall there be\nAnother and a happier life for thee.\n1881.\n\n\n\nAN EASTER FLOWER GIFT.\n\nO dearest bloom the seasons know,\nFlowers of the Resurrection blow,\nOur hope and faith restore;\nAnd through the bitterness of death\nAnd loss and sorrow, breathe a breath\nOf life forevermore!\n\nThe thought of Love Immortal blends\nWith fond remembrances of friends;\nIn you, O sacred flowers,\nBy human love made doubly sweet,\nThe heavenly and the earthly meet,\nThe heart of Christ and ours!\n1882.\n\n\n\nTHE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS.\n\n\"All hail!\" the bells of Christmas rang,\n\"All hail!\" the monks at Christmas sang,\nThe merry monks who kept with cheer\nThe gladdest day of all their year.\n\nBut still apart, unmoved thereat,\nA pious elder brother sat\nSilent, in his accustomed place,\nWith God's sweet peace upon his face.\n\n\"Why sitt'st thou thus?\" his brethren cried.\n\"It is the blessed Christmas-tide;\nThe Christmas lights are all aglow,\nThe sacred lilies bud and blow.\n\n\"Above our heads the joy-bells ring,\nWithout the happy children sing,\nAnd all God's creatures hail the morn\nOn which the holy Christ was born!\n\n\"Rejoice with us; no more rebuke\nOur gladness with thy quiet look.\"\nThe gray monk answered: \"Keep, I pray,\nEven as ye list, the Lord's birthday.\n\n\"Let heathen Yule fires flicker red\nWhere thronged refectory feasts are spread;\nWith mystery-play and masque and mime\nAnd wait-songs speed the holy time!\n\n\"The blindest faith may haply save;\nThe Lord accepts the things we have;\nAnd reverence, howsoe'er it strays,\nMay find at last the shining ways.\n\n\"They needs must grope who cannot see,\nThe blade before the ear must be;\nAs ye are feeling I have felt,\nAnd where ye dwell I too have dwelt.\n\n\"But now, beyond the things of sense,\nBeyond occasions and events,\nI know, through God's exceeding grace,\nRelease from form and time and place.\n\n\"I listen, from no mortal tongue,\nTo hear the song the angels sung;\nAnd wait within myself to know\nThe Christmas lilies bud and blow.\n\n\"The outward symbols disappear\nFrom him whose inward sight is clear;\nAnd small must be the choice of clays\nTo him who fills them all with praise!\n\n\"Keep while you need it, brothers mine,\nWith honest zeal your Christmas sign,\nBut judge not him who every morn\nFeels in his heart the Lord Christ born!\"\n1882.\n\n\n\nAT LAST.\n\nWhen on my day of life the night is falling,\nAnd, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,\nI hear far voices out of darkness calling\nMy feet to paths unknown,\n\nThou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,\nLeave not its tenant when its walls decay;\nO Love Divine, O Helper ever present,\nBe Thou my strength and stay!\n\nBe near me when all else is from me drifting\nEarth, sky, home's pictures, days of shade and shine,\nAnd kindly faces to my own uplifting\nThe love which answers mine.\n\nI have but Thee, my Father! let Thy spirit\nBe with me then to comfort and uphold;\nNo gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit,\nNor street of shining gold.\n\nSuffice it if--my good and ill unreckoned,\nAnd both forgiven through Thy abounding grace--\nI find myself by hands familiar beckoned\nUnto my fitting place.\n\nSome humble door among Thy many mansions,\nSome sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,\nAnd flows forever through heaven's green expansions\nThe river of Thy peace.\n\nThere, from the music round about me stealing,\nI fain would learn the new and holy song,\nAnd find at last, beneath Thy trees of healing,\nThe life for which I long.\n1882\n\n\n\nWHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET.\n\nThe shadows grow and deepen round me,\nI feel the deffall in the air;\nThe muezzin of the darkening thicket,\nI hear the night-thrush call to prayer.\n\nThe evening wind is sad with farewells,\nAnd loving hands unclasp from mine;\nAlone I go to meet the darkness\nAcross an awful boundary-line.\n\nAs from the lighted hearths behind me\nI pass with slow, reluctant feet,\nWhat waits me in the land of strangeness?\nWhat face shall smile, what voice shall greet?\n\nWhat space shall awe, what brightness blind me?\nWhat thunder-roll of music stun?\nWhat vast processions sweep before me\nOf shapes unknown beneath the sun?\n\nI shrink from unaccustomed glory,\nI dread the myriad-voiced strain;\nGive me the unforgotten faces,\nAnd let my lost ones speak again.\n\nHe will not chide my mortal yearning\nWho is our Brother and our Friend;\nIn whose full life, divine and human,\nThe heavenly and the earthly blend.\n\nMine be the joy of soul-communion,\nThe sense of spiritual strength renewed,\nThe reverence for the pure and holy,\nThe dear delight of doing good.\n\nNo fitting ear is mine to listen\nAn endless anthem's rise and fall;\nNo curious eye is mine to measure\nThe pearl gate and the jasper wall.\n\nFor love must needs be more than knowledge:\nWhat matter if I never know\nWhy Aldebaran's star is ruddy,\nOr warmer Sirius white as snow!\n\nForgive my human words, O Father!\nI go Thy larger truth to prove;\nThy mercy shall transcend my longing\nI seek but love, and Thou art Love!\n\nI go to find my lost and mourned for\nSafe in Thy sheltering goodness still,\nAnd all that hope and faith foreshadow\nMade perfect in Thy holy will!\n1883.\n\n\n\nTHE \"STORY OF IDA.\"\n\n     Francesca Alexander, whose pen and pencil have so reverently\n     transcribed the simple faith and life of the Italian peasantry,\n     wrote the narrative published with John Ruskin's introduction under\n     the title, _The Story of Ida_.\n\nWeary of jangling noises never stilled,\nThe skeptic's sneer, the bigot's hate, the din\nOf clashing texts, the webs of creed men spin\nRound simple truth, the children grown who build\nWith gilded cards their new Jerusalem,\nBusy, with sacerdotal tailorings\nAnd tinsel gauds, bedizening holy things,\nI turn, with glad and grateful heart, from them\nTo the sweet story of the Florentine\nImmortal in her blameless maidenhood,\nBeautiful as God's angels and as good;\nFeeling that life, even now, may be divine\nWith love no wrong can ever change to hate,\nNo sin make less than all-compassionate!\n1884.\n\n\n\nTHE LIGHT THAT IS FELT.\n\nA tender child of summers three,\nSeeking her little bed at night,\nPaused on the dark stair timidly.\n\"Oh, mother! Take my hand,\" said she,\n\"And then the dark will all be light.\"\n\nWe older children grope our way\nFrom dark behind to dark before;\nAnd only when our hands we lay,\nDear Lord, in Thine, the night is day,\nAnd there is darkness nevermore.\n\nReach downward to the sunless days\nWherein our guides are blind as we,\nAnd faith is small and hope delays;\nTake Thou the hands of prayer we raise,\nAnd let us feel the light of Thee!\n1884.\n\n\n\nTHE TWO LOVES\n\nSmoothing soft the nestling head\nOf a maiden fancy-led,\nThus a grave-eyed woman said:\n\n\"Richest gifts are those we make,\nDearer than the love we take\nThat we give for love's own sake.\n\n\"Well I know the heart's unrest;\nMine has been the common quest,\nTo be loved and therefore blest.\n\n\"Favors undeserved were mine;\nAt my feet as on a shrine\nLove has laid its gifts divine.\n\n\"Sweet the offerings seemed, and yet\nWith their sweetness came regret,\nAnd a sense of unpaid debt.\n\n\"Heart of mine unsatisfied,\nWas it vanity or pride\nThat a deeper joy denied?\n\n\"Hands that ope but to receive\nEmpty close; they only live\nRichly who can richly give.\n\n\"Still,\" she sighed, with moistening eyes,\n\"Love is sweet in any guise;\nBut its best is sacrifice!\n\n\"He who, giving, does not crave\nLikest is to Him who gave\nLife itself the loved to save.\n\n\"Love, that self-forgetful gives,\nSows surprise of ripened sheaves,\nLate or soon its own receives.\"\n1884.\n\n\n\nADJUSTMENT.\n\nThe tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed\nThat nearer heaven the living ones may climb;\nThe false must fail, though from our shores of time\nThe old lament be heard, \"Great Pan is dead!\"\nThat wail is Error's, from his high place hurled;\nThis sharp recoil is Evil undertrod;\nOur time's unrest, an angel sent of God\nTroubling with life the waters of the world.\nEven as they list the winds of the Spirit blow\nTo turn or break our century-rusted vanes;\nSands shift and waste; the rock alone remains\nWhere, led of Heaven, the strong tides come and go,\nAnd storm-clouds, rent by thunderbolt and wind,\nLeave, free of mist, the permanent stars behind.\n\nTherefore I trust, although to outward sense\nBoth true and false seem shaken; I will hold\nWith newer light my reverence for the old,\nAnd calmly wait the births of Providence.\nNo gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down\nUntroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds;\nLove yet remains, its rosary of good deeds\nCounting in task-field and o'erpeopled town;\nTruth has charmed life; the Inward Word survives,\nAnd, day by day, its revelation brings;\nFaith, hope, and charity, whatsoever things\nWhich cannot be shaken, stand. Still holy lives\nReveal the Christ of whom the letter told,\nAnd the new gospel verifies the old.\n1885.\n\n\n\nHYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ.\n\n     I have attempted this paraphrase of the Hymns of the Brahmo Somaj\n     of India, as I find them in Mozoomdar's account of the devotional\n     exercises of that remarkable religious development which has\n     attracted far less attention and sympathy from the Christian world\n     than it deserves, as a fresh revelation of the direct action of the\n     Divine Spirit upon the human heart.\n\nI.\nThe mercy, O Eternal One!\nBy man unmeasured yet,\nIn joy or grief, in shade or sun,\nI never will forget.\nI give the whole, and not a part,\nOf all Thou gayest me;\nMy goods, my life, my soul and heart,\nI yield them all to Thee!\n\nII.\nWe fast and plead, we weep and pray,\nFrom morning until even;\nWe feel to find the holy way,\nWe knock at the gate of heaven\nAnd when in silent awe we wait,\nAnd word and sign forbear,\nThe hinges of the golden gate\nMove, soundless, to our prayer!\nWho hears the eternal harmonies\nCan heed no outward word;\nBlind to all else is he who sees\nThe vision of the Lord!\n\nIII.\nO soul, be patient, restrain thy tears,\nHave hope, and not despair;\nAs a tender mother heareth her child\nGod hears the penitent prayer.\nAnd not forever shall grief be thine;\nOn the Heavenly Mother's breast,\nWashed clean and white in the waters of joy\nShall His seeking child find rest.\nConsole thyself with His word of grace,\nAnd cease thy wail of woe,\nFor His mercy never an equal hath,\nAnd His love no bounds can know.\nLean close unto Him in faith and hope;\nHow many like thee have found\nIn Him a shelter and home of peace,\nBy His mercy compassed round!\nThere, safe from sin and the sorrow it brings,\nThey sing their grateful psalms,\nAnd rest, at noon, by the wells of God,\nIn the shade of His holy palms!\n1885.\n\n\n\nREVELATION.\n\n     \"And I went into the Vale of Beavor, and as I went I preached\n     repentance to the people. And one morning, sitting by the fire, a\n     great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me. And it was\n     said: All things come by Nature; and the Elements and the Stars\n     came over me. And as I sat still and let it alone, a living hope\n     arose in me, and a true Voice which said: There is a living God who\n     made all things. And immediately the cloud and the temptation\n     vanished, and Life rose over all, and my heart was glad and I\n     praised the Living God.\"--Journal of George Fox,\n     1690.\n\nStill, as of old, in Beavor's Vale,\nO man of God! our hope and faith\nThe Elements and Stars assail,\nAnd the awed spirit holds its breath,\nBlown over by a wind of death.\n\nTakes Nature thought for such as we,\nWhat place her human atom fills,\nThe weed-drift of her careless sea,\nThe mist on her unheeding hills?\nWhat reeks she of our helpless wills?\n\nStrange god of Force, with fear, not love,\nIts trembling worshipper! Can prayer\nReach the shut ear of Fate, or move\nUnpitying Energy to spare?\nWhat doth the cosmic Vastness care?\n\nIn vain to this dread Unconcern\nFor the All-Father's love we look;\nIn vain, in quest of it, we turn\nThe storied leaves of Nature's book,\nThe prints her rocky tablets took.\n\nI pray for faith, I long to trust;\nI listen with my heart, and hear\nA Voice without a sound: \"Be just,\nBe true, be merciful, revere\nThe Word within thee: God is near!\n\n\"A light to sky and earth unknown\nPales all their lights: a mightier force\nThan theirs the powers of Nature own,\nAnd, to its goal as at its source,\nHis Spirit moves the Universe.\n\n\"Believe and trust. Through stars and suns,\nThrough life and death, through soul and sense,\nHis wise, paternal purpose runs;\nThe darkness of His providence\nIs star-lit with benign intents.\"\n\nO joy supreme! I know the Voice,\nLike none beside on earth or sea;\nYea, more, O soul of mine, rejoice,\nBy all that He requires of me,\nI know what God himself must be.\n\nNo picture to my aid I call,\nI shape no image in my prayer;\nI only know in Him is all\nOf life, light, beauty, everywhere,\nEternal Goodness here and there!\n\nI know He is, and what He is,\nWhose one great purpose is the good\nOf all. I rest my soul on His\nImmortal Love and Fatherhood;\nAnd trust Him, as His children should.\n\nI fear no more. The clouded face\nOf Nature smiles; through all her things\nOf time and space and sense I trace\nThe moving of the Spirit's wings,\nAnd hear the song of hope she sings.\n1886","title":"Religious Poems, Part 2.: Part 6 From Volume II of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":13502}