Amenophis and Other Poems Sacred and Secular :: :: University of Virginia Library

Death; Judgment; Heaven; Hell:—Man would despair of life if he really realized these, as was attempted by some of old.—The tradition of Glamis Castle.—The Chartreuse of Saint Bruno near Grenoble.—Such a life now scantly possible, nor, for mankind generally, in the truest accordance with Nature. Our detachment from the world must be while in the world.—Earthly and heavenly comforts as aids to life and death in Christ.

Before these human eyes
Could that dread Vision rise,
Those four last Terrors all mankind must know;
The ghastly grave: The Throne
And He Who is thereon:
The verdict-voice of God, dividing weal from woe:

Scarce could we turn or care
To look upon this fair
And varied earth,—this laughing sea and sky;
On Nature's genial face
The Fate-mark we should trace,—
A rose-crown'd victim led unconscious forth to die!

That long, long, trumpet-thrill
Our trembling ears must fill,
Gainst voice of man and joy of music steel'd:—
Life's motley moving show
Too poor would seem, too low
For eyes to that vast world beyond the world unseal'd.

As who in manhood's hour
Within the fateful tower
Goes, not returning what he went: For he
On that has dared to gaze
Which twilights all his days,
And turns the whole vain world to vainer vanity:

So on our mortal sight
If Thou should'st choose to smite
The fearful things to come, too clear, too nigh,
The heaven-dishearten'd soul
Would faint to near the goal;
Before Death's Gorgon face sweet life to stone would die.

O 'tis in mercy, then,
Thou hast withheld from men
The sacred terrors of the final day:
The weight of too much truth
Would crush the flowers of youth,
And blight the fruits of age, the crown of life's decay!

So keep the mercy-veil,
Lest our sad spirits fail,
Dead ere our day before the dread To-be:—
Let Thy soft gracious cloud
The black horizon shroud,
Thy bow o'erarch the vale, and bid us rest in Thee!

—Yet those we blame not, they
Who in earth's earlier day
And nearer Christ,—fleeing to wold and waste,
With the whole heart's whole power
Fore-lived their life's last hour,
Thirsting before the time the gulphs of death to taste.

I see the climbing road
Which from Isère he trode,
Bruno, while on the heights a home he seeks:
Rock-sown the vale and rude,
The soul of solitude;
Gray shiver'd walls around, and Angel-haunted peaks

There in the twilight low
The white-robed brothers go,
And meet and pass,—no sign, no look, no word:
Only they lift their sight
Tow'rd the loved cross-crown'd height,
And pierce beyond the blue, and see the ascended Lord.

There in dim granite cave,
To Fancy's eye the grave
Of some forgotten far off warrior wild,
Circling the saintly head
The light of Heaven is shed,
As in the Mother's arms he sees the Eternal Child.

And though the final Fear
Gloom near and yet more near
As days from life's fast-falling rosary slip;
Yet in that Faith and Friend
Secure, he sights the end,—
God's pardon and award from his Redeemer's lip.

—Not in the wild, not so
Our later footsteps go,
Doom'd to the garish world, the vulgar sphere!
The dull worn ways, the strife
And highway-dust of life,
Such is thy lot, O Man!—thine heritage is here!

For not this globe alone
Pursues a track unknown,
Whirl'd by our Monarch Star through boundless space:
Man's heart is drawn by God
In lines of old untrod;
Fresh paths to Heaven disclosed before the changing race.

—Where man cannot intrude
We have our solitude;
The heart of heart, the inviolate inner shrine:
We call on Thee, and there
The soul Thou canst prepare
To face the Four Last Things, veil'd o'er by Love divine:

From sight veil'd o'er, that so
With steadier fuller flow
Life's river to the eternal sea may stream:—
Uncheck'd by terror chill,
That we the field may till,
A man's work while 'tis day, ere night unyoke the team.

A man's full year-long task,—
Not less than this we ask,
Lest sloth enrust the soul, unstirr'd and still:
Unknown, or known; low; high;
Beneath the Master's eye
'Tis one, if wrought for Him, with joy of earnest will.

Lift from our hearts the gloom
Of that near-yawning tomb!—
The song of birds, the flower at our feet,
All precious things and fair
We need, life's weight to bear;—
The heaven-lit light of home, the smiles of children sweet.

And in Thy holy place
Thou dost unfold the grace
Strong in that hour to comfort and to save:
We see the Victim die,
The Lord gone up on high,
The life-in-death of Christ,—the glory of the grave!

—Then keep the mercy-veil,
Lest our faint spirits fail,
Dead ere our day before the dread To-be:—
Till the soft hand of Love
The shroud of earth remove,
All tears wiped from all eyes;—the Soul at rest with Thee.