University of Virginia Library

Oh Silence, born of Wisdom! we have felt
Thy fitness, when beside the smitten friend
We took our place. The voiceless sympathy
The tear, the tender pressure of the hand
Interpreted more perfectly than words
The purpose of our soul.
We speak to err,
Waking to agony some broken chord
Or bleeding nerve that slumbered. Words are weak,
When God's strong discipline doth try the soul;
And that deep silence was more eloquent
Than all the pomp of speech.
Yet the long pause
Of days and nights, gave scope for troubled thought
And their bewildered minds unskillfully
Launching all helmless on a sea of doubt
Explored the cause for which such woes were sent,
Forgetful that this mystery of life
Yields not to man's solution. Passing on
From natural pity to philosophy
That deems Heaven's judgments penal, they inferr'd
Some secret sin unshrived by penitence,
That drew such awful visitations down.
While studying thus the wherefore, with vain toil
Of painful cogitation, lo! a voice
Hollow and hoarse, as from the mouldering tomb,

“Perish the day in which I saw the light!
The day when first my mother's nursing care
Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come
Into the number of the joyful months,
Let blackness stain it and the shades of death
Forever terrify it.
For it cut
Not off as an untimely birth my span,
Nor let me sleep where the poor prisoners hear
No more the oppressor, where the wicked cease
From troubling and the weary are at rest.
Now as the roar of waves my sorrows swell,
And sighs like tides burst forth till I forget
To eat my bread. That which I greatly feared
Hath come upon me. Not in heedless pride
Nor wrapped in arrogance of full content
I dwelt amid the tide of prosperous days,
And yet this trouble came.”
With mien unmoved
The Temanite reprovingly replied:
“Who can refrain longer from words, even though
To speak be grief? Thou hast the instructor been
Of many, and their model how to act.
When trial came upon them, if their knees
Bow'd down, thou saidst, “be strong,” and they obey'd.
But now it toucheth thee and thou dost shrink,
And murmuring, faint. The monitor forgets
The precepts he hath taught. Is this thy faith,
Thy confidence, the uprightness of thy way?
Whoever perish'd being innocent?
And when were those who walk'd in righteous ways
Cut off? How oft I've seen that those who sow
The seeds of evil secretly, and plow
Under a veil of darkness, reap the same.