University of Virginia Library

‘You crave me for some record of my thoughts;
You give me yours, and ask for mine again,—
Some transcript of my musings, day by day,
While seated by my never-lonely hearth
In these sharp weeks, when keen December's cold
Chains the free stream and whitens field and hill,
Covering old earth's dead face as with a veil
Of frozen moonlight, hiding its shut eyes,
And shrouding features now no longer fair.’

So writes the hand of old companionship,
And so I read the page that now folds out,—
The thoughtful page of a most classic pen,
Which in a bolder hand would soon have led
Its owner into fields of world-wide fame.

‘Men and their words, as memory may serve,
Strewed over years long past, I would recall;
They with myself, their thoughts with mine halfmingled,—
Life interwoven with life and thought with thought,
Like boughs of the thick forest. One I knew,
A worshipper of shadows from his youth,
Who walked with me life's path for many a year.
He loved the clouds because they were unreal;
He followed most the paths which led to nothing,
And which, but for their own quaint windings, were
Devoid of beauty like a moorland track.
He looked into the mists for rainbow-hues
That seemed to be, but were not; down the depths
For pearls that diver's hand could never grasp.
Between to-day's pursuit of all bright things,
And cold to-morrow's disappointed hopes,
His life went by; yet other life than this
To wish he seemed not. Upon air he fed,
And things which grew of air; he flung away
His twoscore years of prime, and left behind
Only a beacon, not a monument.
Gifts, fortune, friends, he had upon his side;
But what were willing winds and waves to one
Who had no chart to steer by, and no haven?
What was the soul, however large, to one
Who never looked beyond the suns of time
Save in sad mockery, to dream and speak
Of the unknown and the unknowable;
Whose fancy was his only oracle;
Who could buy land and pleasure at his will,
Yet slighted that which silver could not win,—
The true imperishable gladnesses
Strewn in our daily paths by heavenly hands,
Free as the general air or common sun?

‘He dreamed and doubted; flung belief away,
Then took it to his bosom; mused and wondered,
Thinking that what had been might be again,
Might be for ever. “Who can tell?” he said.
“Pluck the bright day while yet the sunshine lasts,
And call it thine. Belief or unbelief,
What are they? Only the unreal words
Of spirits groping in the mist for what
They know not. Is not faith a sick man's dream?
And is not truth a thing of age or clime?
And is not joy the transitory gleam
Of some aberrant meteor on its way
To nothingness? And is not all of that
Which man calls life a vision of the night?
And what is death? The exhalation merely
Of midnight mist, or fragment of a cloud,
On which some moonshine rested for an hour.”

‘So reasoned he, so doubted, and so died.
His life was wasted, and he sowed no seed
Which might spring after him; the world was not
His debtor while he lived, nor when he died.
His is a grave without a monument,
And no one has been glad that he was born.
The winds were ever on his side, and yet
He moved not on, but lay like one becalmed,
Or strayed in eddies, narrower or more wide,
As the capricious impulse urged him on.
There was a needy world around him, yet
Its famished spirit was not fed by him.
Sorrow and evil dwelt hard by, and yet
No ray from him e'er lighted up a soul,
Or made the world less dark than it had been.
“My early rising will not raise the sun
One hour the sooner,” he was wont to say
As he lay down upon his bed of ease;
And yet, in the sad consciousness of life
Thus gone to waste, he would speak out at times;
“The fool resolves not till the battle's lost;
It is too late to don the helmet when
The head is struck and death is in the blow.
Fools at the end, the wise at the beginning,
Know what is to be done; the wise proceed
Straightway to do it, in the face of storm
Or enemies or weariness of spirit,
Heedless of failure upon failure, still
Bent on success and resolute to win.
Fight your own battle; lean on none but God;
Beware of allies in a warfare such
As that to which thou hast been born, and which,
Or well or ill, must be fought out alone.
No sin (so says the proverb of the East)
That is persisted in is small; no sin
Laid at God's feet remaineth great or dark.
Tempt not the tempter; he is near enough
Already; bid him go upon his way,
And leave thee to pursue thy work in peace.
Be wise in time, lest on your tomb be carved,
As upon mine, the words that warn,—TOO LATE.”’

Thus writes another, chronicling the past:
‘Your old friend the Beginner, as you called him,
He promised fair; none fairer; he has gone,
And left no mark. Capricious and unstable,
He finished nothing, and his life was filled
With poor abortions,—torsos,—hardly that;
As if upon each marble block that lay
Around, he had his chisel tried in vain.
'Twas not mere fame he lost; that was not much:
He left the world no richer than he found it,
And passed away unmissed,—none to record
His birth with joy, or, visiting his tomb,
In love to say, What owe I not to him!

‘He left the harbour to go down at sea,
The dull wave closing over him unwept.
He started on the race, but dropt aside,
Losing both goal and prize. He drew the bow
Strongly and well; the arrow missed the white;
In fickle haste he flung away the bow,
And emptied the full quiver on the ground.
Brilliant and sparkling, but unstable, like
A fountain playing in the sunshine, swayed
Hither and thither by the chafing wind,
Then sinking suddenly to nothingness,
He promised brightness, but it died in gloom.
His life was lived in vain; at every point
Unfinished and abortive, broken off
Just when it might have told; begun in earnest,
It quickly cooled, as if the fire within
Had burned itself away before the time.

‘Yet find I, written in some wakeful hour,
When the full sense of what he might have been
And might have done burst in upon his soul,
Thoughts such as these, not worthy to be lost:
“All things, both good and evil, have their cycles—
The sickness and the health, the calm, the storm,
The labour and the rest; they come and go
In tides, alternating their flow and ebb;
Not like the river, always on and on.
Let not to-morrow swallow up to-day.
Too late to-night the skilled physician comes,
To call back life that left at early morn.
To-morrow's calm restoreth not the wreck
Of yesterday; nor roots itself again
The uprooted pine. Then on, however dark;
The undoing is beyond us, and the loss
Is loss for ever; therefore quarrel not
With the dead past, which no device of thine
Can bring to life again, but fling thyself
Upon the future, and make it thine own;
Seize for thyself its unwrought mines of gold;
Let not the past be father of the future,
But live as thou hast never lived before;
So shall thy poverty be turned to wealth.
The night brings back the stars; the wintry frost
Freshens the blood; the keen gale of the north,
Tho' blowing over miles of desolate moor,
Makes the pale cheek to bloom, and bloom again,
When softer breezes left it only wan.
Stumble and fall not, you will mend your pace;
Stumble and fall, you must at once arise,
Or else be trodden down by those behind.
Make sure of every footstep, yet remain not
Upon the ladder's lowest round, but rise,
Rise daily; it will take a lifetime's years
To reach the top. Like huntsman of the rocks,
Pursue thy prey, and know what thou pursuest.
Oft, when we think that we have seized the quarry,
'Tis we ourselves are caught. Grasp not too much,
Lest thou lose all. Think not your safety lies
In many roads; one pathway will suffice
Better than thousands, if so be it lead
To the one city whither thou wouldst go.
'Tis by a single, sometimes slender thread,
That we unwind the skein; the many threads
Do but entangle, and make effort vain.
Who strikes the naked anvil but a fool?
Bring out the glowing iron, lay it there,
Then strike and spare not; so thy skilful arm
Shall not bring down the steady stroke in vain.
Think ere thou openest thy lips, and know
Whither thou goest ere thou tak'st thy staff.
Life is no venture, and that soul of thine
Was not created to be flung away,
Or spilled like water on the absorbing sand.
Make much of May; husband thy summer hours,
And lay up sunshine for the day of frost.
Winter is coming, and it may be sharp;
Its icy touch will freeze thy fervent veins.”

‘Thus wrote he down at times his thoughts, like one
In quest of goodness, groping for the day.
He saw the light, and yet he walked not in it;
He saw the darkness, yet he shunned it not:
The currents of the world rushed by, and swept him
From every anchorage far out to sea.

‘Another college-friend you may remember,
In threadbare raiment (for with shirt of ice
Cold poverty had girt him), but with mien
Modest, yet dauntless as the winter oak
That breasts the gale upon the battered cliff.
His lean face told us that his fare was scanty;
His big cloak hid the poverty beneath;
His dwelling he preferred to be unknown,
Save to the few who loved him for his worth,
And whom he trusted for their worth again.
His books were old and torn, save when a friend
Had lovingly but secretly supplied
His need. November's rain fell hardly on him,
And the keen March-breeze struck him to the bone.
His midnight lamp was ill supplied with oil,
And even that stinted store was dearly bought
With scantier meals. His winter hearth was cold,
The sharp wind searched his attic thro' and thro',
And the snow sifted thro' the broken panes
Of his ill-lighted chamber. When the days
Grew warm with summer's love and summer's smile,
He sought the sunshine of the southern glen,
That won him with its silence and its joy;
Or the soft shade of the fresh-budding fir
Upon the ruddy moorland, where the lark
Sung its delicious song to the clear noon.
For he loved summer with a passionate heart,—
Wept when it ended, joyed when it began,
And sighed when sweet June's longest evening told
That the dear brightness had begun to wane.
He revelled in its brilliance; it was his,
Poor tho' he was, and he could have it all,
Yet no one be the poorer for his wealth.
His mind was lofty, and his soul was large;
In person comely, and in manners far
Above his birth. Refined in tone and thought
By nature and by study, he won hearts
And found companionships. The honour came
He did not seek; but more, the wisdom came
That he had sought so fondly and so well,—
Wisdom, the fruit of self-denying years
And studious toil, whose ripe abundance filled
His eager spirit; and with it there came
Eternal wisdom, such as He alone
Can give who giveth unupbraidingly
And with a generous hand to all who ask,
Filling the soul's wide vessel to the full,
And mellowing while gladdening all the life.

‘Lifted from poverty, he sought not wealth,
But took the little he had won, and went
To live a useful, uneventful life,
Out from the world's great city-heat, and from
The sweep of her fierce tempests, which strike down
The sons of earth's ambition, who seek fame,
And power, and eminence, at cost of all
The calmnesses and charities of life.

‘And one went with him to his sweet retreat,
Whom he had loved and sought, but loved and sought
For years in vain. Her friends in pride had said
That she should wed herself to nobler blood,
And she had yielded to their pride; yet still
Her soul was his, even when she stood aloof.
And she was worthy of his lofty spirit;
Nor could she hide from him the secret joy
His presence gave, even when her words were cold.
He won her at the last, with all her worth,
And he forgave her these slow years of pain,
In which she loved as tho' she loved him not,—
Forgave her for her beauty and her love.

‘The freckled sky bent mildly over them,
The sun went softly thro' the snowy clouds,
The scent of many a rose was in the air,
The west wind wooed the clover in its bloom,
And, like a lover's breath upon the cheek,
Made each rich blossom quiver with delight,
Wandering unbidden o'er the glowing heath,
On that fair noon when before man and God
They vowed the holy vow that made them one.

‘'Twas a chill, livid eve when they returned
And crossed the threshold of their future home.
The sky looked wan and weary, and the gale,
In haste to strip the forest, swept along
O'er the desponding earth; and as it went,
Smote the slow pulses of the shivering sea,
And roused them to the tempest's fever-heat.
For miles along the level sand, the surf
Rose like a silver ledge to fringe the gloom;
While farther out the breakers foamed and fell,
Their long grey tresses loosened in the breeze,
Deep calling unto deep in tumult wild.
The near seemed cheerless, and the far had lost
The clear, calm outline which to distance gives
Its sweet and finished loveliness; the clouds
Seemed mountains, and the mountains seemed like clouds,
So mingled and confused was earth with heaven.

‘“Is this a shadow,” said they to each other,
“Even now begun to fall upon our lot?
Or shall we set the noon against the night,
And take the presage from the former? Or,
Yet better, shall we fling all omens off,
And look above the darkness and the light
To Him, the Guider of our course, with whom
Dwelleth no night, and into whose fair heaven
Clouds cannot come, nor tempest, nor the bolt
Of the capricious lightning, nor the chills
Of winter, nor the tainted breath of sickness,
Nor the hot tear, nor sigh of broken heart,
Nor sin, the bitter fountain-head of all
The ills that wander o'er this helpless earth?

‘“Then on we move; thro' darkness or thro' light,
Thro' the thorn-thicket or the garden-walk,
O'er the rough mountain or the easy plain,
All will be well. The tent is not the palace,
The desert is not Eden; but the love
Which fills yon heaven is ours for evermore,
Shorter or longer let our journey be,
O'er every scene the blessed cross sheds day,
And love is leaning o'er us from the height
Of the invisible heavens, still bidding us
Look up and love, look up and taste the joy.
Day unto day is uttering happy speech,
Night unto night revealeth wisdom there.
The cross where He, the Light of light, once hung,
In conflict with the Prince of Darkness, shines
In heavenly gladness, piercing every shade;
From it distilleth health, and up from it
There wells the water of immortal life.
Ours be the faith which turns all ill to good!
Ours the quick ear that can take in far music,
And learn both song and tune! Ours the keen eyes
That can see angels where no others can!
Then on we move, to face each coming storm;
Brief is the day of tempests, brief the age
Of ill, the end of which is endless calm.
Shall He, beneath whose everlasting wing
We have sought shelter, e'er forget us? Yes;
When the neglectful sea forgets its tides,
Or skies grow weary of their glorious stars,
Or the sun trips in mid-air,—rushes off
Into the distance of oblivious space,—
Then we may be forgotten; nay, not then,
Not even then;—let all the universe
Break loose or crumble into ancient dust,
There still remains the constant love of God.
No flux of tide in that eternal love;
Always the same, a calm, unchanging sea,
Which never knew a shipwreck nor a storm.”

‘Two tranquil years they lived, and then she passed
To be with Him whom, seeing not, she loved;
Leaving behind her here a happy child,
Fair as her mother, and as full of love;
Who, as her womanhood came on, found one
Whose heart was hers, to whom she gave herself;
And for a season sunshine seemed to come
Back to her father's dwelling and her own.
That season was not long; the cloud returned,
And brought with it a double grief and gloom:
Her heart's beloved perished in the deep;
She pined, and followed him; one child she left,
Sole prop and solace of the aged sire.

‘Him found I in his solitude,—the friend
Whose worth and learning we had ofttimes proved
In other days, when both were in our prime.
He told me all, speaking with that deep calm
Which lengthened sorrow brings, and with that tone
Of solemn cheerfulness oft given to men
Whose days are closing, and who know that soon
They shall rejoin the lost, o'ertaking those
Who had outstripped them in the race of time.
“Here she was born,” he said, “my child of hope,
And here I saw her die, on the same couch
Where she who bare her died, long years before.
This is her child, a mother's orphan love,
All boyhood's brightness nestling in his cheek.
He calls me father, for his own he knew not,
Save by his picture yonder, and his tomb
In that green hollow, where the name,—no more,—
Is cleanly carved on the enduring stone.
Mother and father, sister, brother, all
Am I to him, my thrice-beloved boy:
Dear for thyself art thou, thy joyous self,
Staff of my right hand, upon which my age
Leaneth so fondly in my wanderings here;
Dear, too, for her that bare thee; all her face
Mirrored in thine, and all her voice in thine
Echoed so truly;—O my summer-rose,
Which the cold night-blast struck down from the stem,
Thou art not here to shed thy fragrance round!
Thou, the bright May-bud,—this, the glistening dewdrop
Which thou didst clasp within thy opening folds.

‘“You see her tomb,—her own, her husband's grave,
In the low nook which for herself she chose,
Hard by the happy streamlet, and as far
As might be from the melancholy sound
Of the cold sea, beneath whose fatal surge
He whom she loved, and on whose arm she leaned
A few fair years, went down, when with brave arm
He fought the foaming breaker, as it swept
On to the sinking shell of the strong barque,
Which the fierce north wind flung upon the rocks.
To the wild cry of shipwreck quick responding,
He braved the billow in its strength, and led
The hope forlorn into the deadly breach,
And in that ocean found an early grave.
He swam for life; the stalwart arm struck out,
And seemed to conquer for a time; he rose
And faced the storm; but the resistless wave
Proved stronger than his arm, and bore him down.
Flinging upon the wreck the shorebound line,
He sank, and rose not;—with him all in me
That we call life went down and disappeared.

‘“Unsympathizing sea, absorbing man
And all man's sweetest loves and tenderest hopes
In thy cold gloom; upon thy heartless wave
Hither and thither tossing in thy mirth
The corpse of age or smiling infancy,
Of noble youth or gentle womanhood,
To fling them on the slippery rock afar,
Unshrouded, 'mid the tangle and the foam,
And sending up into the brooding air
The mocking laughter of thy greedy surge!
Ungracious and inexorable sea!
Unlike this mother-earth, which giveth back
All lovingly the sacred seed we sow
In her fond bosom thousand-thousand-fold,
Thou graspest all, but thou restorest none;
Insatiable in thy hunger, in thy caves
Far underneath the tide of moving green,
Unfathomed and unvisited of man,
Burying them deep, without a monument
Or turf to mark the lone, lone place of love.
Soon shall I follow; life to me no more
Is life upon this desolated earth.
'Tis not that dying sun alone that haunts me,
As o'er yon level forest he goes down,
And tells me that another day is gone;
It is the memory of suns long set,
Linked with old loves and joys, with looks and voices
That have all passed, and come not back again,
Or only come in visions of the night,
Like the lark's song heard far above our heads,
As from an unseen lute amid the clouds.

‘“Care for this boy when I am gone, and may
A brighter course than mine to him be given!
I would be gone; for him alone I live.
Already has the deep home-sickness come,
Which men of mountain-lands are said to feel
In exile, when the visions of the past
Rise up to view, and beckon their return.
God makes the blind bird's nest, the proverb says,
And I am blind with sorrow; so to Him
And to His Christ I do commit whate'er
Or long or short remains of life to me.
Care for the boy, my friend, when I am gone.
A few years longer than myself, perhaps,
Thou may'st be spared; oh, watch his sunbright hours,
That no polluting shadow dim their gold;
From the thick evils of a perilous world
Guard thou his youth, and help to shape his course
In ways of uprightness when life is fresh
And flexible, ere conscience has been seared
And the heart petrified with early vice.
Earth's air is dull and damp; it suiteth not
The tender bud or the new-opened blossom.
Its summer's sun inebriates the soul,
Its winter's chill freezes the springs of faith,
And hard it is in such ungenial clime
To bring to ripeness spring's fair promises.
Oh, teach him to be true to man and God;
Set his face stedfast to the eternal light,
The light of Him who dwelleth in the light,
And with whom darkness has no fellowship.
Take thou the helm, and teach him how to steer,
To trim the sail, to watch both tide and wind,
Shunning the sand and rock, with pilot-skill
Rounding the headlands of a stormy age,
Marking the beacon on the cliff or isle,
By no false light misled on either hand;
Pressing with straining mast and swelling sail,
By chart and compass, thro' time's perilous deep,
To the safe shore on which no wreck is strewn,
Nor evil enters with its serpent-trail,
Nor sin deforms, but righteousness and peace
O'erflow in placid fulness, making all
Fair beyond thought, as in time's holy dawn
(Now long since overcast), when the first sun
Smiled o'er the beauty of this dædal earth,
And laid its light kiss on Armenian snows.”

‘Some years he lived, then followed those he loved,
And sleeps with them beneath the well-known tomb.
The child lives on, and oft his boy-bright eye
Reads the dear names engraven on the stone,
And then looks upward to the peaceful blue.
What he may be when I am gone I know not,
But what I see gives hope of what I see not:
I mark the gleam of the true life within,
Like star that finds its way thro' broken skies,
Or like the first stroke of a master-pencil
Flung on a virgin canvas, yet to be
Spread out for many an eye to gaze upon,
To be at once a lesson and a power.

‘That which we sow is the corruptible;
The incorruptible we soon shall reap.
'Tis weakness that we lay beneath the turf;
The strength is coming in the day of strength,
The age of immortality and love.
Man measureth the known, but only God
Measures the unknown. Man amid the seen
Maketh his dwelling; 'mid the unseen, God.
Man in his balances the present weighs;
The future, God, in more unerring scale.
Man needeth for his path the constant light,
Or else he stumbleth; in the darkness, God
Moveth in majesty as in the light,
Darkness and light are both alike to Him.
What is within the veil to Him we leave;
It will be fairer than what here we see,
It will be more enduring than the past.

‘Who falleth next on this sad battle-field
Of earth, where millions have already fallen?
Some friend, or child, or brother, then myself;
Until the level turf with myriad mounds
Is heaving, burdened with the endless slain!
For dust we are, and shall to dust return.—
O winds that never weep, when will ye blow,
And flowers that never fade, when will ye spring?
Suns that shall never scorch nor set, when shall
Your rising come? O summer of the living,
When shall your life-day dawn? Morn without clouds,
Rich with the freshness of celestial dew,
When will ye light up these cold hills of time?
O healing Spirit, come! There is no health
For the great sickness of humanity
But in thy warm breath, thy benignant touch.
Breathe on this mortal earth, and lay thy hand
Upon its sick-beds; light up faded eyes;
Pour immortality thro' every vein;
Spoil the rank graveyard of its golden dust,
And cover the dead earth with holy life.

‘So mused I as I left my friend's abode,
Returning homewards, all the history
Of our past threescore years awaking fresh
To memory, and calling calmly up
Thought upon thought, as scene on scene arose.

‘They are not silences that dwell around us
Outside the curtain of this noisy earth,—
Sorrowful silences, as men have dreamed.
The universe is God's, and He is there,
The great inhabitant of all we see,
And all we see not; yet Himself distinct
From all His handiworks, the living God,
In whom we live and move and have our being.
The spheres are there, with all our melodies;
They whom we loved are there; they are not dead,
But gone within the veil, to reappear
When evening comes, like the light-buried stars.
What we call space is not vacuity,
Silent and cold, like a forsaken hall,
Or wilderness untenanted by man.
The angels' tents are there, unseen by us,
And angels' songs are sung, by us unheard.
The past does not absorb us, nor destroy
The life which age by age is passing in
Within its gates of shadow and of awe.
We live upon the past, and that which we
Call death becomes our life; the things of old
Are always new, yielding to us each day
Their never-ending lessons of deep truth.
Its strength the palm-tree drinks from the dry sand,
And the vine feeds on ashes; we build up
Our daily being out of that which was,
But is not,—things and men of other times,
The ruins of old shrines and palaces,
The habitations of the ages gone,
Love's relics, friendship's gifts, the faded flowers
That when they perished left our garden bare.
We live upon the dead, and we in turn
Shall yet be lived upon by those who loved us,
When, like our fathers, we have shed our tears,
And done our work, and fought the fight of time

‘O fruitful past! exhaustless treasure-house
Of untold wealth! prolific soil, in which
The present sows itself, and out of which
There comes not one brief harvest, but a long
And blessed reaping for the sons of man!
Much has the present hour in store for us
Of happy wisdom, gleaned from each new day,
To make us truer, nobler, holier men.
We would go forth, and from the thriftless air
The hoarded sunshine pluck at will; and yet
It is from summers long since out of sight,
And suns long set, we gather truest life.
The present has a near and low horizon;
That of the past is measureless. The world,
The busy world, that lives in its own day,
Lies flat upon the ground and sees no stars;
Its face is downward, and it clutches fast
The golden or the iron bars of earth.
We would look out upon the ages gone,
Dig their old mines for treasure, search their seas
For pearls that nowhere else on earth are found.
The true is there, and even the fabulous,
Tho' teeming with the false and dark, at times
Contains the true; like Scandinavian woods,
Where iron tales were told from iron lips
By iron men, that teach nobility
And hardihood of spirit to our sons.

‘The wise man's heritage is everywhere;
Nowhere the fool's, tho' half a realm be his.
The wise man gleans in every field, and finds
No mine exhausted, no truth stale or poor.
Honouring the tree, tho' lowly, under which
His father and his father's father once
Found shelter, he sits down beneath its shade.
For old men's words are true, he says; old thoughts
Grow milder and more mellow with their years,
And their grey hairs are comely; he would treat
The past with reverence, yet sifting still
The evil from the good, and wondering when
Truth, now half-hidden, shall spring up in strength
From the dull soil, and spread o'er every field.
The rude, loquacious present, and the past,—
The tranquil past,—how different in their mien
And their instruction! Yet how well we know
That silent lessons root themselves the deepest,
And bear the brightest fruit.—The file of time,
Inaudible, eats thro' earth's iron bars,
Opening the dungeons of our fettered race;
As once the angel, with mysterious touch,
Threw wide the gate, and bade the messenger
Of heavenly truth go forth in liberty
At midnight from his Syrian prison-house,
With, “Gird thyself and bind thy sandals on,
Fling thy cloak round thee, up and follow me.”
Yet the cells close again, and other chains,
Brighter perhaps, but stronger, bind the race.
The day of true celestial liberty,
The era of a liberated world,
Of chains for ever broken, has not come.
The sword of truth with its mute edge hews down
The falsehoods of the ages everywhere;
Yet still they rise again. The old soil, still
Fruitful in ill, retains its poison-roots,
And yields a harvest of yet deadlier growth.

‘And yet I know that ill shall have an end,
And time's disorder into order rise.
The deluge that has covered this fair globe
With its disastrous waters shall ere long
Be dried, rolled back from off a suffering soil,
And pent up in the caverns whence it came.
These sifting winds of earth shall sink in balm;
This strife of nature shall at length be still,
The storm-song sink into a dying fall,
And the chafed air breathe only summer-peace.
All life's entangled knots unravelled then;
The inky stains, in millions dropped upon
The once fair page of this unblemished earth,
Sponged out by Him who made it fair at first!

‘Evil! I meet thee in my daily walk;
And first I tremble sorely; then I ask,
“But whither goest thou?” Thou answerest,
“To where all evil ends, all sorrows die.”
So let it be. But yet it seems as if
The day of gladness were too long deferred.

‘Suns of the past, whose settings now are done,
Shine out on us with all your treasured warmth
And ancient grandeur, as when ye arose
On Eden and its joys, or lighted up
The peaks of Ararat, or shone upon
Shinar and Ur and Haran, all along
The pilgrim-life of the believing man,
Who went where the great Voice commanded him,
Where the celestial glory guided him,—
He knew not whither; or as when ye shone
On Zion with its marble palaces;
Or on Moriah's temple blazing full,
In the rich glow of Oriental gold,
Hour after hour around its glowing walls
And smoking altar; or as when ye saw
The Roman firebrand kindle its last flames,
The Roman battle-axe come thundering down
Upon its cedar-work, till all was ruin,—
Gate, wall, and rampart flung into the depths
Of the dark hollow that engirds her round,—
The smoking ruin bubbling up with blood.

‘Suns of the past, that lighted up old Troy,
And wreathed fair Ida with your joyous glow;
And gleamed on Salamis, or bronzed the Nile;
And struck the lyre of Memnon, or stole thro'
The pillars of Palmyra, and blazed o'er
The giant gates and avenues of Thebes,
Or watched the rising of the Pyramids,
Or chisellings of Assyrian palaces
And the great idols of the Nimrod fanes;
And saw Phœnician Carthage rise and fall,
And Rome ascend her ancient seven-hilled throne;
That shone upon old Britain's sullen wastes,
And Caledonian forests, ere they knew
A history, and stored up within their mines
The dormant fire, that like a prisoned spirit
Was to awake in later days, and make
This isle the wonder of an envious world.
Suns of the city and the silent waste!
Suns of the sea-swept cliff and dew-bright plain,
That gleam along the river, light the glen,
Or gild the ocean, o'er whose ancient face
For ages ye have shone in calm or storm!
Suns of earth's sapphire roof, beneath whose bend
Time's deeds have all been done, time's words all spoken,
Time's mighty changes wrought!—I turn to you,
And ask you to reveal the hoarded secrets,
Evil and good, that ye have witnessed here.

‘Ye cannot tell the future, nor can see
Into its boundless distances, tho' high
Your station be above the hills of earth
And clouds of time. Yet, as I look on you,
I muse on what you one day shall behold
Hereafter, when the ages shall unroll
The long, long hidden good in store for man,
And bid creation doff its withered leaves
To clothe itself with spring,—resplendent spring,
The spring of heavenly verdure, holy peace,
All purity, all beauty, and all love.

‘Then heaven has come to earth, and earth is heaven;
The shadow of the tomb has passed away,
And all is life; each mortal mist is gone,
And earth is fair once more; death is dethroned,
Its sceptre shivered, and itself a name
Among the fallen potentates of old,
That moulder in dishonoured sepulchres,
That have been, and yet are not, nor again
Shall ever be. The breaker up of love,
The sunderer of families, the fierce,
Remorseless foe of man exists no more:
The spoiler now is spoiled, the prison-house
Is emptied, and the prisoners go forth
With song and joy; the long captivity
Is now avenged; the broken heart is healed,
The tears are wiped, the age of light begun.

‘Sun of the coming age, how long shall these
Deep clouds of evil that pollute our sky
Delay thy dawn and muffle all thy beams?
Rise in thy strength, and bid the night be gone;
Go forth in haste, O pure and perfect Light,
Do battle with the darkness of the world,
And overcome; rear trophies everywhere;
Dissolve the dazzling error; glorify
The truth, and send it forth enrobed in power,
To do its work among the sons of men.
The frost of unbelief now covers earth,
Whitens its fields and binds its joyous streams,
Sparkling, yet, in that very sparkling, cold.
Shine out, and with thy universal warmth
Melt down this frozen darkness, dissipate
Each vapour that would dim the eye, O Sun!
Bid the false vanish, and the true appear.

‘All that is true in worship must have root
In truth, eternal truth, and not in dreams.
All that is real in service, or in that
Which men religion call, must be the offspring
Of truth, and not of error or of doubt.
For he who deals with God must know the God
To whom he cometh, and must know the way
By which the Holy is to be approached
By the unholy, or for prayer or praise.

‘True Light, whose place of dawn shall be the East,
The ancient East, old birthplace of the true,
Array thyself in majesty, and come!
Out from fair Salem's rock-hewn sepulchre
Thou comest in the greatness of thy strength
And brightness of Thy beauty, scattering gloom
And pouring out Thy gifts of peace. Not like
That which so fatally once issued from
The fabled casket of the all-gifted one,
Filled with all human woes, to be let loose
Upon a hapless race; but like the sweetness
Of the rare spikenard-box of old, once broken
To anoint the Holy One, which filled the room
With odour, such as told of heaven itself;—
So from the opened sepulchre come forth,
Fair sun, and with the fragrance hidden there,
Immortal, irresistible, divine,
Breathe o'er this sickly soil, and sweeten all
Our atmosphere with everlasting health.’