University of Virginia Library

Confessions that have nothing to confess,
Or in the deed more darkly still transgress,
Not such are mine—I merely bring the load,
Wherewith I travel on my troubled road,
And set it down a moment by the way,
While at the restful shrine I pause and pray.
And here, while on the altar is my hold,
Part of my burden I will now unfold;
With Heaven above my words to blame or bless,
Whate'er my speech or silence shall confess.
Lo, I confess that I am human all,
That every day a hundred times I fall,
And every day a hundred times repent,
To pave my life with many a pure intent.
Yea, I confess my nights are dread with dreams,
And gloomier from the light that through them gleams—
That but the fetters of convention gilds,
And decks the living tomb the darkness builds.
While all my sunshine is by shadow prest,
And day is only night without its rest.
But I have lived and loved and suffered loss,
And cursed the ocean that I could not cross,
That leads to fairer fields of peace and light,
Where faiths are broad and every brow is bright;
While o'er its waves I stretched my starving hands
In hunger for the sweet and pleasant lands,
That rise in radiance from the farther shore,
Where sufferers feast and never hunger more.
And I have blotted out the curse with tears,
That shed a verdure through the shadowy years,
And made the barren pastures bloom and shine,
As with the droppings of a dew divine.
O I have laboured in the heat of noon,
And weary vigils watched beneath the moon,
With wan white faces like a flickering flame,
That waited for the dawn which never came;
And hopes that trembling on the track of light,
Went sighing into silence and the night.
Oft I have bound in wedlock man and maid,
And to the dying borne consoling aid
I missed myself, and dimly longed to feel;
And while my own I fondly failed to heal,
I had a salve for alien wounds and sores,
For strangers only heaping up my stores;
And though the same fresh streams were flowing still,
I thirsted when the others drank their fill.
So one has plenty got and one has nought,
And they that find may never yet have sought;
While he who seeks shall haply find in pain,
Time is but trouble and devotion vain.
Yea, though I mixed myself with many fears,
And was a portion of the bitter years,
I felt for ever, in the weary round
Of awful vision and of solemn sound,
In all I heard, in every scene I saw,
The iron limit of a grinding law,
That ground the nations in its hungry teeth,
And drew them down to fiery gulfs beneath.
I saw the outcast shivering in the shade,
That kind and casteless nature never made—
Besotted rulers arming hideous hordes,
Who educate their slaves to be their lords,
And with the splendour of their gold and spice,
Adorn themselves for dreadful sacrifice:
When from a thousand thousand mines and mills,
Where vice its bosom long with vengeance fills,
The swart grim masses spurning thankless toil,
Swearing and sweating out their sin and soil,
Shall fall upon their masters like a flood,
And blot them out in blinding fire and blood—
When rooting up each rank and Royal weed,
The sovereign people shall be king indeed.

And I have learned from bitter cult and creed,
The blood of Martyrs is the Churches' seed.
For life is large, and deeper than our dreams,
And in its bosom gathers all extremes;
It is the sun of mortal hopes and fears,
And all the contradictions of the years.
The broadest of the systems framed by man
Has each a limit in its broader plan;
The lowliest joys and sorrows hold a place,
Within the ample bliss its arms embrace.
It takes account of every loving sigh,
And every cloud that darkens in our sky.
It bathes in beauty even the meanest plea,
As earth is girdled by the kindly sea.
For mere existence is a joy that gives
A grace and grandeur to each thing that lives,
And human nature in its heart has room
For every broken gleam and barren gloom.

Then shall religion, which is more than life,
With all our richest vows and visions rife,
Be cramped and coffined in an earthly shell,
By sanctions that of cemeteries smell—
The narrow catchwords of a noisy crew,
Whose tongues are many and whose faiths are few?
Dead bones may fashion doctrines but not deeds,
And fossil crotchets are poor stuff for creeds.
Religion is no form of frozen signs,
That prisons man in primly-lettered lines:
It is the dawn that with our darkness copes,
The best expression of the best of hopes—
The channel into which our choicest dreams,
Pour all the pathos of their starlit streams.
The bourne to which we dimly reach in prayers,
Through golden gates, up white-worn altar stairs—
The sweetest blossom of our saddest hour,
When love and wonder burst in perfect flower.
It feeds the purest passion of our strife,
And is the perfume and the dew of life—
The bloom of every pleasure, and the joy
That nought increases, and that nought can cloy—
It gives to pain its keenest edge and point,
And crowns the head that sorrow's hands anoint.
Faith is the fuel of its heavenly fire,
And yet it scorns not any dim desire;
While the misgivings of the darkest night,
Are but the plumes that wing its arrowy flight.

But bitter are the fruits of bloody cults,
While earnest erring garners grand results;
Yea, bleak and pinched are laws of human pride,
Though God's commandment is exceeding wide.
All honest doubts and fears are nobler tools
Than all the dogmas of a thousand schools;
And one sweet act that lightens humble needs,
Is better than the cries of all the creeds.