The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier in four volumes |
1. |
1. |
2. |
3. |
4. |
5. |
6. |
7. |
8. |
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. |
2. |
1. |
2. |
1. |
2. |
3. |
3. |
1. |
1. |
2. |
3. |
2. |
The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS.
The incident upon which this poem is based is related in a note to Bernardin Henri Saint Pierre's Etudes de la Nature.
“We arrived at the habitation of the Hermits a little before they sat down to their table, and while they were still at church. J. J. Rousseau proposed to me to offer up our devotions. The hermits were reciting the Litanies of Providence, which are remarkably beautiful. After we had addressed our prayers to God, and the hermits were proceeding to the refectory, Rousseau said to me, with his heart overflowing, ‘At this moment I experience what is said in the gospel: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. There is here a feeling of peace and happiness which penetrates the soul.’ I said, ‘If Fénelon had lived, you would have been a Catholic.’ He exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, ‘Oh, if Fénelon were alive, I would struggle to get into his service, even as a lackey!’”
In my sketch of Saint Pierre, it will be seen that I have somewhat antedated the period of his old age. At that time he was not probably more than fifty. In describing him, I have by no means exaggerated his own history of his mental condition at the period of the story. In the fragmentary Sequel to his Studies of Nature, he thus speaks of himself: “The ingratitude of those of whom I had deserved kindness, unexpected family misfortunes, the total loss of my small patrimony through enterprises solely undertaken for the benefit of my country, the debts under which I lay oppressed, the blasting of all my hopes,—these combined calamities made dreadful inroads upon my health and reason. ... I found it impossible to continue in a room where there was company, especially if the doors were shut. I could not even cross an alley in a public garden, if several persons had got together in it. When alone, my malady subsided. I felt myself likewise at ease in places where I saw children only. At the sight of any one walking up to the place where I was, I felt my whole frame agitated, and retired. I often said to myself, ‘My sole study has been to merit well of mankind; why do I fear them?‘”
He attributes his improved health of mind and body to the counsels of his friend, J.J. Rousseau. “I renounced,” says he, “my books. I threw my eyes upon the works of nature, which spake to all my senses a language which neither time nor nations
Speaking of Rousseau, he says: “I derived inexpressible satisfaction from his society. What I prized still more than his genius was his probity. He was one of the few literary characters, tried in the furnace of affliction, to whom you could, with perfect security, confide your most secret thoughts. ... Even when he deviated, and became the victim of himself or of others, he could forget his own misery in devotion to the welfare of mankind. He was uniformly the advocate of the miserable. There might be inscribed on his tomb these affecting words from that Book of which he carried always about him some select passages, during the last years of his life: His sins, which are many, are forgiven, for he loved much”
I pray for help to unbelief;
For needful strength aside to lay
The daily cumberings of my way.
Sick of the crazed enthusiast's rant,
Profession's smooth hypocrisies,
And creeds of iron, and lives of ease.
I read the record of our Lord;
And, weak and troubled, envy them
Who touched His seamless garment's hem;
Above the grave where Lazarus slept;
Of Olivet, His evening hymn.
The beggar crouching at the gate,
The leper loathly and abhorred,
Whose eyes of flesh beheld the Lord!
Sweet fountains of His noonday rest!
O light and air of Palestine,
Impregnate with His life divine!
On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's brook;
Kneel at Gethsemane, and by
Gennesaret walk, before I die!
Would melt before that Orient light;
And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain,
My childhood's faith revive again!”
Where the still river slid away
Beneath us, and above the brown
Red curtains of the woods shut down.
The mute appealing of his look,—
“I, too, am weak, and faith is small,
And blindness happeneth unto all.
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man;
Remains to make our own time glad,
Our common daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
What gain to thee time's holiest date?
The doubter now perchance had been
As High Priest or as Pilate then!
In Him had Nain and Nazareth?
Of the few followers whom He led
One sold Him,—all forsook and fled.
Nor storied stream of Morning-Land;
The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,—
What more could Jordan render back?
To find the Orient's marvels here;
The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.
In signs and tokens manifold;
Slaves rise up men; the olive waves,
With roots deep set in battle graves!
A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
A light is breaking, calm and clear.
Erelong shall swell from star to star!
That light, the breaking day, which tips
The golden-spired Apocalypse!”
And, sighing, sadly smiled, I said:
“Thou mind'st me of a story told
In rare Bernardin's leaves of gold.”
The shadows of the frost-stained grove,
And, picturing all, the river ran
O'er cloud and wood, I thus began:—
The Chapel of the Hermits stood;
And thither, at the close of day,
Came two old pilgrims, worn and gray.
The storms of Baikal's wintry side,
And mused and dreamed where tropic day
Flamed o'er his lost Virginia's bay.
All hearts had melted, high or low;—
Immortal in its tenderness.
Beat quick the young heart of his age,
He walked amidst the crowd unknown,
A sorrowing old man, strange and lone.
Pale setting of a weary day;
Too dull his ear for voice of praise,
Too sadly worn his brow for bays.
Yet still his heart its young dream kept,
And, wandering like the deluge-dove,
Still sought the resting-place of love.
The peasant's welcome from his door
By smiling eyes at eventide,
Than kingly gifts or lettered pride.
All-pitying Nature on him smiled,
And gave to him the golden keys
To all her inmost sanctities.
She laid her great heart bare to him,
Its loves and sweet accords;—he saw
The beauty of her perfect law.
What notes her cloudy clarion blew;
The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes,
The hymn of sunset's painted skies.
Which swept, of old, the stars along;
And to his eyes the earth once more
Its fresh and primal beauty wore.
And field and wood, a balm for care;
And bathed in light of sunset skies
His tortured nerves and weary eyes?
His words had shaken crypt and throne;
Like fire, on camp and court and cell
They dropped, and kindled as they fell.
The mitred juggler's masque and show,
A prophecy, a vague hope, ran
His burning thought from man to man.
The fraud of priests, the wrong of law,
And felt how hard, between the two,
Their breath of pain the millions drew.
The weakness of an unweaned child,
A sun-bright hope for human-kind,
And self-despair, in him combined.
To half the glorious truths he knew;
The doubt, the discord, and the sin,
He mourned without, he felt within.
Sweet pictures on his easel glowed
Of simple faith, and loves of home,
And virtue's golden days to come.
The foil to all his pen portrayed;
Still, where his dreamy splendors shone,
The shadow of himself was thrown.
Up to Thy sevenfold brightness climbs,
While still his grosser instinct clings
To earth, like other creeping things!
So high, so low; chance-swung between
The foulness of the penal pit
And Truth's clear sky, millennium-lit!
Quick fancy and creative brain,
Unblest by prayerful sacrifice,
Absurdly great, or weakly wise!
Without were fears, within was strife;
And still his wayward act denied
The perfect good for which he sighed.
The fame that crowned him scorched and burned,
Burning, yet cold and drear and lone,—
A fire-mount in a frozen zone!
Seen southward from his sleety mast,
About whose brows of changeless frost
A wreath of flame the wild winds tossed.
Of lambent light and purple shade,
Lost on the fixed and dumb despair
Of frozen earth and sea and air!
By those whose wrongs his soul had moved,
He bore the ban of Church and State,
The good man's fear, the bigot's hate!
Its pomp and shame, its sin and wrong,
The twain that summer day had strayed
To Mount Valerien's chestnut shade.
Lent something of their quietude,
And golden-tinted sunset seemed
Prophetical of all they dreamed.
The bell was calling home to prayers,
And, listening to its sound, the twain
Seemed lapped in childhood's trust again.
A sweet old music, swelling o'er
Low prayerful murmurs, issued thence,—
The Litanies of Providence!
In His name meet, He there will be!”
And then, in silence, on their knees
They sank beneath the chestnut-trees.
As daybreak to the Arctic night,
Old faith revived; the doubts of years
Dissolved in reverential tears.
“Ah me!” Bernardin sighed at last,
“I would thy bitterest foes could see
Thy heart as it is seen of me!
Thou hast but spurned in scorn aside
A bare and hollow counterfeit,
Profaning the pure name of it!
His fire the western herdsman feeds,
And greener from the ashen plain
The sweet spring grasses rise again.
Disturb the solid sky behind;
And through the cloud the red bolt rends
The calm, still smile of Heaven descends!
And scourging fire, thy words have passed.
Clouds break,—the steadfast heavens remain;
Weeds burn,—the ashes feed the grain!
Its touch pollute, its darkness blind;
And learn, as latent fraud is shown
In others' faith, to doubt his own.
And pious hope we tread in dust;
Lost the calm faith in goodness,—lost
The baptism of the Pentecost!
Too oft on truth itself are spent,
As through the false and vile and base
Looks forth her sad, rebuking face.
We come not scathless from the strife!
The Python's coil about us clings,
The trampled Hydra bites and stings!
The plastic shapes of circumstance,
What might have been we fondly guess,
If earlier born, or tempted less.
Misjudged alike in blame and praise,
Unsought and undeserved the same
The skeptic's praise, the bigot's blame;—
Among the highly favored men
Who walked on earth with Fénelon,
He would have owned thee as his son;
Visibly waving over him,
Seen through his life, the Church had seemed
All that its old confessors dreamed.”
“The humblest servant at his side,
Obscure, unknown, content to see
How beautiful man's life may be!
Than solemn rite or sacred lore,
The holy life of one who trod
The foot-marks of the Christ of God!
The oneness of the Dual law;
That Heaven's sweet peace on Earth began,
And God was loved through love of man.
The strong man Reason, Faith the child;
In him belief and act were one,
The homilies of duty done!”
The two old pilgrims went their way.
What seeds of life that day were sown,
The heavenly watchers knew alone.
Green Summer in her brown and gold;
Time passed, and Winter's tears of snow
Dropped on the grave-mound of Rousseau.
The pained on earth is pained in hell!”
So priestcraft from its altars cursed
The mournful doubts its falsehood nursed.
“Thy hand, not man's, on me be laid!”
Earth frowns below, Heaven weeps above,
And man is hate, but God is love!
Nor chapel with its chestnut-trees;
A morning dream, a tale that 's told,
The wave of change o'er all has rolled.
And from its twilight cool and gray
Comes up a low, sad whisper, “Make
The truth thine own, for truth's own sake.
Its perfect flower and fruit in man?
No saintly touch can save; no balm
Of healing hath the martyr's palm.
Of spiritual pride and pampered sense,
A voice saith, ‘What is that to thee?
Be true thyself, and follow Me!’
The wanton's wish, the bigot's word,
And pomp of state and ritual show
Scarce hid the loathsome death below,—
The losel swarm of crown and cowl,
White-robed walked François Fénelon,
Stainless as Uriel in the sun!
The poor were eaten up like bread:
Men knew him not; his garment's hem
No healing virtue had for them.
The white cymar gleams far behind,
Revealed in outline vague, sublime,
Through telescopic mists of time!
But in the Lord, old Scripture saith;
The truth which saves thou mayst not blend
With false professor, faithless friend.
In others in thyself may be;
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;
Be thou the true man thou dost seek!
The whitest of the saints of God!
To show thee where their feet were set,
The light which led them shineth yet.
Which marked their path, remain in thine
And that great Life, transfused in theirs,
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers!”
A word of fitness to my need;
So from that twilight cool and gray
Still saith a voice, or seems to say.
While down the west the sunset burned;
And, in its light, hill, wood, and tide,
And human forms seemed glorified.
And purple bluffs, whose belting wood
Across the waters leaned to hold
The yellow leaves like lamps of gold.
Forever old, forever new,
These home-seen splendors are the same
Which over Eden's sunsets came.
Lift voiceless praise and anthem still;
Fall, warm with blessing, over them,
Light of the New Jerusalem!
Of John's Apocalyptic dream!
Yon green-banked lake our Galilee!
For olden time and holier shore;
God's love and blessing, then and there,
Are now and here and everywhere.”
The poetical works of John Greenleaf Whittier | ||