The American common-place book of poetry with occasional notes |
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Incomprehensibility of God.
—Miss Elizabeth Townsend.
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 | The American common-place book of poetry |  |
Incomprehensibility of God. —Miss Elizabeth Townsend.
“I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him.”
Where art thou?—Thou! Source and Support of all
That is or seen or felt; Thyself unseen,
Unfelt, unknown,—alas! unknowable!
I look abroad among thy works—the sky,
Vast, distant, glorious with its world of suns,—
Life-giving earth,—and ever-moving main,—
And speaking winds,—and ask if these are Thee!
The stars that twinkle on, the eternal hills,
The restless tide's outgoing and return,
The omnipresent and deep-breathing air—
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Are not the Power I seek; are thine, not Thee!
I ask Thee from the past; if in the years,
Since first intelligence could search its source,
Or in some former unremembered being,
(If such, perchance, were mine) did they behold Thee?
And next interrogate futurity—
So fondly tenanted with better things
Than e'er experience owned—but both are mute;
And past and future, vocal on all else,
So full of memories and phantasies,
Are deaf and speechless here! Fatigued, I turn
From all vain parley with the elements;
And close mine eyes, and bid the thought turn inward.
From each material thing its anxious guest,
If, in the stillness of the waiting soul,
He may vouchsafe himself—Spirit to spirit!
O Thou, at once most dreaded and desired,
Pavilioned still in darkness, wilt thou hide thee?
What though the rash request be fraught with fate,
Nor human eye may look on thine and live?
Welcome the penalty! let that come now,
Which soon or late must come. For light like this
Who would not dare to die?
Peace, my proud aim,
And hush the wish that knows not what it asks.
Await his will, who hath appointed this,
With every other trial. Be that will
Done now, as ever. For thy curious search,
And unprepared solicitude to gaze
On Him—the Unrevealed—learn hence, instead,
To temper highest hope with humbleness.
Pass thy novitiate in these outer courts,
Till rent the veil, no longer separating
The Holiest of all—as erst, disclosing
A brighter dispensation; whose results
Ineffable, interminable, tend
E'en to the perfecting thyself—thy kind—
Till meet for that sublime beatitude,
By the firm promise of a voice from heaven
Pledged to the pure in heart!
To meet with such a piece of poetry as this, which we find in the fifth volume of the Unitarian Miscellany, would repay us for the toil of looking through whole libraries. It is equal in grandeur to the celebrated production of Bryant—“Thanatopsis;” nor will it suffer by a comparison with the most sublime pieces either of Wordsworth or of Coleridge. The latter (with a feeling a kin to the elevated inspiration which animates these noble lines) has said,
“For never guiltless may I speak of Him,The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
I praise Him, and with Faith, that inly feels:
Who with his saving mercies healed me,
A sinful and most miserable man.”
Ed.
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