University of Virginia Library

SECTION VI. The Prisoner of Eternity.

THE PRISONER OF ETERNITY.

THE BOOK OF BANE.

THE BOOK OF BLESSING.

AN EASTER HYMN.

HOW BEAUTIFUL.

MY GARDEN.

Ye beeches fashioned by the storms,
Ye solemn oaks
So gnarled and twisted into demon forms
Through which the sunlight soaks
In summer, and ye guardian pines
That build a barrier to the northern blast,
Earth-fast,
Whereby it scarce can find an entry—
That stand in stubborn lines,
Like God's great peace as sentry;
Ye are my kin
And playmates, and one common shadow falls
As of a common sin
On me and on your sheltering walls.
Ye are my friends,
And ye and I
Grow still beneath the same blue equal sky,
And to no different ends
Put forth the shoots of tender trust
From dust
And darkness, into the sweet air
To clothe and make our bodies fair
And something better than the clod,
And feed the heart
Of man and life so close apart,
Not for ourselves but God.
We wrestle
Both with the winter winds and catch
And cling unto each other,
Or softly sleep and dimly nestle
And each as with a brother
Under the twilight in the cool and calm,
And breathe in balm
That silence cannot smother
One evening psalm
Unto the same dear Heaven that bows
In blessing on our languid brows.
Ye are my teachers too,
Wise with the hoary lessons of the past
Which prophets vainly woo
Until to you as children sent at last.
I learn
From yellow pages of your lichened boles,
The path of pilgrim souls;
What sufferings earn
By cross and loss and bitter bindings,
And daily losings that are findings;
What sin,
Which makes us all akin,
Has wrought with cruel moulding
And serpentine enfolding,
By which we thrive
Or do decay
And pass away
To rise renewed once more and re-alive;
What love,
The general pulse, the general law
Of crooning dove
And snowy maid
With love's new light and living awe
Impassioned and afraid,
Has turned to music and to song
That rolls the happy world along.
I read
And reap from your dear mossy books
The elemental forces of the mind,
That knead
And lead
From dusky nooks
Sweet natures blind,
To studies of the laughing brooks
And wisdom of the travelled wind.
Ye are my house,
My clothing and my bread,
Shared with the flitting moth and mouse
And song-birds overhead.
Yes, in your greenery of gloom
So soft and spacious,
So glad and gracious,
I with my cares and fantasies find room
For all their features,
And blighted feelings bloom
That hid like wounded creatures
In shadow, and again take shape
And in their freedom from their wounds escape.
The manna of your dew and scent
Is heavenly food
For every mood,
And fulness of a deep content.
But in the evening comes the Master down
To see His garden, as of old,
And then each tree in dainty gown
Before Him bends its green and gold
And lays its crown
Of praise and wonder,
And murmurs from the leaf-hid mould
That He may pass in peace thereunder.
And I,
Who see Him not but only guess
That He is beautiful and nigh
And comes to bless,
Yet mix my loyal sigh
With yours and melt into His Loveliness.
Dear Trees,
My sole companions, my sole friends,
When life has settled on the lees
That nothing mends,
In you I find
The sympathy I seek
Soft on my cheek
And medicine to my troubled mind;
There is a sanctuary in your sod
That feels no Fall,
And safe within your arms that call
I walk with God.
And ye, my flowers,
In architectured piles and orders
Obedient to your ivied borders,
That weave me bowers
Of pink and purple, white and red,
Spilled over every spacious bed
In broad profusion—
Ye are dear
In all the depths of your Divine seclusion,
From russet stem to starry tear
That glistens
High on some blue or crimson cup,
And gathers up
Deep in its tiny cell
Serenely curl'd
As in a fairy crucible
The grace and glory of the whole wide world.
Ye maiden flowers in pretty frocks,
My lady-smocks
And goldylocks,
I know
The passion and the glow
That through your veins with summer flow;
Ye hollyhocks,
My sentinels, that stand on guard
And brave the tempests when they blow,
However scarr'd;
I feel the spirit in my measure
That breathes through you and is life's treasure
And gives the sadness
With the gladness
Bound up in one white flame of pleasure,
And drinks of mirth and drinks of madness.
While far below you at your feet
Upon the misty plain
The murmurous city—street on street
Stands out a yellow stain.
But all its spires
And splendid towers
With all enchantments of the olden hours,
That burnt like fires
Their memoried scrawls
On scarpèd walls,
Are not to me one half as fair
As lightest air
That whispers round your fairy home,
Or magic sun's
Bright beam that runs
From root to petal
And makes each bloom a dazzling dome
Of precious metal.
For ye have suffering souls like mine
And are Divine,
And your Divinity
Breaks out in scarlet blushes,
Beneath the butterfly;
And in a verdure of intense virginity
Riots and rushes
Beyond the haze
That bounds my gaze
Out in the awful ocean of Infinity;
And in blue weather
Upon that shore,
We play together
And garner little sheaves of lore,
Or drink of the great common store
Tied by one tether
Of living love,
Which holds when lesser bonds go by
And links the gardener and his lush foxglove
One with each other and Eternity.
And O innumerous bees,
That haunt my flowers and trees
And chant your chimes
Among the limes,
And take the honey
Your own as well as mine,
To make me wine
Of joy that is not bought with money;
Throughout the times of history hums
The drowsy music of your drums,
A ceaseless roll
That murmurs all the ages round
And all their riper sweetness sums,
Upon the ever-lengthening scroll
Of happy sound,
When thunder claps of war that toll
To ruin and to death are drown'd.
O garden bright
With borrowed light,
Reflected still from Eden's bowers
And watered with its shining showers,
Thy bosom vernal
Or summer-clad
With trees and flowers and emerald sod,
Is but a shadow of the eternal
Sweet Paradise so green and glad,
Wherein hereafter I shall walk with God.

“NOT A SPARROW,” Etc.

“CONSIDER THE LILIES.”

LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS.

THE GREAT SILENCE (FRAGMENT).

The great white Throne was planted, and the God
Whose robe is thunder and who bears the rod
Of judgment with the books of life and ban,
Who is our Brother and our Fellow man,
Sat thereupon; and men were gathered round,
Nations on nations, worlds beyond a bound,
Innumerable kingdoms and the climes
Of peoples from all places and all times
Since earth began, and to the utmost end
To which creations from their cradles tend
Through birth and fruitful dying. There the Throne
Was fixed, and on it set the Judge alone
In dreadful might and majesty, though not
From wrath and ruin that had been a blot
Or violence and fear, but in the awe
Of unimagined love that was His law.
And yet the terror of the Love so pure
Smote like a fire which no one could endure
With its great wealth of holiness. But He,
Who looked throughout all time that was to be
And had been, spoke no single word of good
Or evil; while in hush beneath Him stood
The generations out of every stage
Of earth and open as a printed page;
As, in the silence like a brooding dove,
He weighed them in the balances of Love.

L' HOMME MACHINE.—EGO, EGO ANIMUS.

L'homme machine.
Freewill is nothing but a poet's dream,
Or fraud of paid professors
Who sit as false assessors
And hope with straws to stay the cosmic stream;
But still the engine's piston and the wheels
Hold on their ceaseless mission,
And life by bud or fission
Or cell and spore its varied thread unreels;
There is no God, I just go blankly on
And do, as I am driven
By the first impulse given,
Just what I must, a blind automaton.

Ego, ego animus.
This heart is soaked in sunrise, and the Spring
For ever keeps it vernal,
And all the great Eternal
Shines through with dreadful overshadowing;
I cannot flee from the pursuing God
Who is in my own bosom,
And makes it fruit and blossom
As He can clothe the barest judgment rod;
I will not hide my soul in sordid pelf
Or place of earthly leaven,
I seek my kindred Heaven,
I know the awful Maker is Myself.

L'homme machine.
I am content to go yet grinding out
The daily task and measure
Of common grief or pleasure,
I feel no deathless pulse nor glorious doubt;
The universal tide flows through me still
From the same dim dumb sources,
And I obey the Forces
Which in me wreak their unknown unloved will;
There is no future and no fairer scene
In higher worlds and hidden,
I live as we are bidden,
I die a broken and ungeared machine.

Ego, ego animus.
In this broad world I have a final voice,
And cherish the true vision,
While with a sharp decision
I cut the darkest nodes by God-like choice;
I feel the stirring of strange wings and powers
With wells that bubble over,
And bright as light on clover
A promise vaster than old Babel's towers;
I am no clod resolved at last to dust,
I am no pinch of matter
To live an hour and chatter,
But spirit splendid though in wrack and rust.

L'homme machine.
I am but the poor product of the sum
Of many forms and factors,
Amid a thousand actors
That dance to ruin with the fife and drum;
I may not gain the profit which I plan,
When enemies of iron
In multitudes environ,
I only reap the gleanings as I can;
I am a vessel if of clay or gold,
Framed in a common fashion
And filled with froth of passion
That shall not ever pass its crumbling mould.

Ego, ego animus.
I love and feel the drawing of the tie,
Which through all time and weather
Joins heart to heart together,
I love and so I never now can die;
I think but thoughts the Father's breath inspires,
And know the farthest fancies
Of my most fond romances
Are but the echo of His grand desires;
I am because He is and He is good
And in me manifested,
As God the Woman-breasted,
The Man incarnate—in all understood.

SPLENDIDA SILENTIA.

ECCLESIÆ SEMEN.

REGAINED IN GOD.

Dear God, it seems so passing strange, I should presume to be
Partaker of Thy bounteous change and its o'er brimming sea;
And take from Thee for every hour the riches I love best,
A world, a woman, or a flower a moment on the breast;
And clothe me from Thy wardrobe large beneath the blessed sky,
Or toy with pebbles on the marge of old Eternity;
And at Thy common table feed on beauty, and rare food
That satisfies each selfish need and most imperious mood;
And drink of fountains pure and bright which at Thy footsteps play,
Or leap in glory from the night of Thy exceeding day;
And yet give less than nothing back to Thee Who givest all,
Save just the refuse and the wrack of some half-sorrowed fall.
Dear God, it never can be right or justly dared and done
To warm my life in boundless Light and offer to Thee none;
I were the meanest basest thing, upon Thy wealth to draw
And mix it with a muddy spring or serve a lower law;
I am not worthy of the name that reckons me as man,
To follow my own shade and shame and use Thy nobler plan.
O if I breathe this vital air and bask in heaven's blue rift,
Or gather bloom of all things fair—let me confess Thy gift.
The sweetness and the joy that flow through every channel fine,
From Thee the glamour and the glow reflect and are divine,
I cannot, will not flout Thee more; whate'er I have or be,
I give myself, my heart, my store—to find again in Thee.

UPWARD.

GOD IS MY CANDLE.

THE HOLY SATAN.

THE RED ROSE AND BLUE.

THE PHANTOM CROSS.

For years I bare the burden of a cross,
With toiling footsteps up a barren hill,
Unto a dim and distant gate of glory
Framed in a heaven of clouds, and only seen
At sunrise by the watcher dutiful
Who wakes the morning with the breath of prayer.
And there was none to help me. Patiently
I climbed those steps of stone, till each a palace
Of praise became, as I poured out my heart
In sacrifice of ceaseless thanksgiving,
For the great blessing of unanswered hopes
And saving sorrow by the ministries
Of calculated suffering, and the crown
With thorns that blossomed while they pierced my brow
And burst in fragrance flooding all the ways
With sweetness like a song. I saw the crimson
Dear petals falling round in drops of blood.
Nor did I murmur at the bitter road,
The jagged cragged turns of gaunt surprise
That fronted me and frowned at every pause,
And reached forth rocky arms to thrust me down
Deep and yet deeper in unplumbed abysses
And hungered for me, body and soul. I went
Still steadfast on, and still the burden grew
More heavy and more hateful and it seemed
In that dread passion of intolerableness
A vital portion with my very flesh
And bone and tissue consubstantiate,
No alien bondage but myself sin-rotted
And dead. But now my consecrated will
Arose in arms and with its larger choice
Upheld me, as I stooped exceedingly
Beneath the inward load, and felt my limbs
Relax a faithless moment in the pains
Insufferable and their dark secret strife,
And lifted me as though on wings above
The passing weakness which had made me water;
Till in the glow and flow of strength renewed
And added powers, I trod temptation down
Below my feet, and mounted higher yet
Upon its dust that fashioned for my feet
Foundations firm and new defensiveness.
And when at last hardly I reached the summit,
The cross I carried was no cross at all
But the mere empty shadow of a fate
That was not mine, the phantom of a woe,
Imagination's trick—no more, no less—
Which aped the ripeness of reality.
My pangs, and the bleak road unbeautiful,
The dreary drudging to the castled top
Consummate in its height, the rough hewn steps,
The iron great hands of winds that by the throat
Clutched me o'erwearied and contestingly
Strove with me to the death, the dizzy ledge,
The sudden chasms and corners, and the grim
Magnificence of sheer sharp headlong falls
Down into empty space and nothingness,
The discipline, the yoke, the angry edges
That cut like cruel swords, the beetling points
Of bayonetted bounds that shut me in,
And the lone horror of the haunted peak;
All these were rooted in rich outwardness,
But not the burden of the blessèd cross
Which while I bare I bare not verily
Save in belief, though its pure virtue ran
Right through my inmost being and was mingled
With every act and thought, and shaped my path
Unto the pattern of its archetype.
And thus I found, who passed the golden gate,
The seeming and the substance were both one,
And truth was beauty but the vision more.

THE BOOKS OF ETERNITY.

The Books were carried
To the Judge, who sat
High on the throne of thought, and worlds thereat
In silent session tarried;
I in fear
Stood far apart and to the extreme edge
Clung, while an unshed tear
A moment blotted out the awful sight
Of nations quivering like the breeze-blown sedge
In arrows of intolerable Light.
Unsaid confession
Trembled on the lips of all,
Who owned transgression
And bowed beneath the shadow of the fall.
Not one
Dared to uplift the burden of a plea,
But with the murmur of a troubled sea
The peoples knew the fate foredone.
The Book of Life was opened, and I saw
The law
Written therein with fire and burning truth
And love's eternal youth,
While in the solemn thunder
Of each line
I felt the beating of the Heart Divine,
Which all its blessed mist would burst asunder.
Then the Book of Remembrance was unsealed,
And I
A little yet more nigh
Drew, for the doom to be revealed.
The hush fell calm and cruel
On my mind,
Strained unto hope and yet resign'd
To utmost wrath. Was I a jewel
Recorded there, if but a casual blot,
Or not?
And then another tear
Clouded my eyes,
And in the dimness I stept still more near
The white seat of all the eternities,
Uuder the blinding curtain
Of my grief,
Which with a foot uncertain
Sought relief.
Lo, as in ages,
One by one the pages
Were turned, in that great dreadful judgment shine;
I read the names of friends and brothers
And of others,
But amid the thousands where was mine?
O some were sadly blurred, and some were stains,
And all had blighted been with sin,
While many struggled forth by bitter pains,
But yet they were within.
I looked and trembled,
And a hunted cry
Of stricken woe and supreme agony
Brake from my tossing bosom undissembled;
And then a tortured tear,
Right from my very heart,
Rushed to the eyes of darkness and despair
Which scarce Omnipotence could now repair;
I took another step more bold, more near,
No longer self-exiled and all apart.
And there I read
As risen from out the dead,
In small and feeble letters but of flame,
Like that which glows in sacred shrines,
On the last page, between the closing lines,
My name.

A THEOPHANY.

O, it may be in the morning, and it may be in the eve—
He will surely on me rise
Like the sun, but in adorning which will set not or deceive,
With a glad and soft surprise;
And the passing of His feet will be beautiful and sweet,
When it strikes my waiting heart
In its watching drawn apart
From the turmoil of the traffic and the murmur of the mart.
In the stable not of fable I shall find Him with His beasts
Where He spreads their humble feasts,
And the reckless one and stranger to His love shall see at last
The bright shadow in the manger by His blessed glory cast,
In His thought for even cattle which about his business go
When the shafts of winter rattle on the shield of frozen snow;
And the path for years so prayerless in its pride and cold and careless,
Shall beneath His presence glow.
He is coming, for I hear Him
Through the clangour and the dust
Of the world so very near Him—
And yet exiled by distrust;
But from faith that is adoring He will never be concealed,
Though their darkness dazzle some,
And to words of true imploring He delights to be revealed—
He is coming, He will come.
Lo, the linnet from the moorland chirrupt, “Here's a little Christ,
And I simply ask a crumb.”
While the pauper in his poorland said, “I cannot be sufficed,
And these hands are Christ's and numb.”
O the enemy whose hate is my early grief and late,
Muttered low beneath His breath;
“Though I have desired thy death,
Yet I feel the Christ within me, and He stands outside thy gate.”
Then my broken bread, in token of His love I scattered free
To His birds a willing fee,
And up leapt their tiny voices in one carol calm and gay
Like a fountain which rejoices in the kisses of the day.
And the beggar at my giving thawed with gratitude, and took
Heart of grace in grander living and a conqueror's proud look;
And the foe, whom in my blindness I had scouted with unkindness,
Chose the friend he long forsook.
He is coming on the river,
He is coming to the shore
In His goodness to deliver
Men who make their bondage more;
In the faintest, feeblest turning as of tendrils to the morn,
He is calling—He is come;
And of every better yearning He in purity is born,
Who's all Blessing and our Home.

THE DEAD GOD.

THE POTTER AND THE CLAY.

THE PRESENCE.

When the Presence draweth nearer,
Which is God,
And the voice upon me clearer
(While I dumbly darkly plod)
Comes, as o'er a thirsty shore—
Growing desolate and drearer
With the rod
Of affliction's maledictions—
Fall at last, in mercy cast
Slaking clod and barren sod,
Warm sweet billows finding pillows
And the rest of sorrow's breast;
Though I feel the fatal twining
Of a horror without ray
Round me as I faintly stand
Feeling for the expected day,
Death is but the veilèd shining
Or the shadow of His hand.
And I pray,
At the clouding of the way,
Lest I stumble on or stray
In the desert of the land;
“Keep me, guide me, hold me, hide me,
In the hollow of Thy hand.”

RETROSPECT.

In the dim shadows of the dying year
I stand apart in awful loneliness,
And read the solemn picture of the past
Unrolled before me like an open book,
Ere it is sealed and laid upon the shelf
Of faded hopes and pious memories
And pretty thoughts and fruitless resolutions.
I see it now with vain regrets and fears,
Too late for medicining of other means;
The thing accomplished that I did not will,
Which came against my better judgment mocked
And marred and unconsenting to the last—
Yet came; the wiser thing by me intended,
As some stretched bow without the arrow's point,
A shy and shadowy outline unfulfilled
And blurred but still most beautiful of all,
With sudden sunrise lights and flames of flowers
And promise brighter than the morn. I mark
Myself, a blotted shape, blear-eyed and lame,
Misformed and with dark devious footsteps, blind,
Stumbling and groping painfully along
A way, no way in mist impenetrable,
And beating the thick air with idle hands
Chained; and a different form of grace appears
Beside the other and its counterpart,
Like and unlike my own, divinely human,
Serene and in a solitude of joy
Ineffable, which walks the earth a king
Over itself and all, crowned and complete
In unapproachableness of clear life—
A radiant thing, an immortality.
This is the angel in me, the sweet God
That dwells in every man a dream incarnate,
Magnificence of possibility,
And would arise and from its envelope
Of flesh and blood shine out and scatter beams
And blessings round in excellent fair deeds.
My archetype! I see it manifold
And mystical with inward gifts and graces,
That should be mine and would engarment me
For ever in the purest panoplies
Of innocence with armèd knowledge one;
Did I but bow the stubborn head and stoop
To that dear yoke of utter gentleness,
The service free, which giving all yet garners
Both worlds of beauty with itself in God.

CREDO QUIA IMPOSSIBILE.

I do believe that in me something dwells
Akin to all and the eternal fact,
Bodied in words or grand incarnate act
Which down the ages rings cathedral bells;
And I am closer Heaven than earth, and more
The spirit of me is than painted flesh
Though cunningly with white and blue-veined mesh
Made sweet and good and pleasant to adore;
And through me thrill the symphonies of Space
To find a chord or two of answering grace,
And here and there a note of rich regretfulness
For other times and chimes in larger lands
When love responded to the Master's hands;
And I may mount to that far great forgetfulness
Which brings us nearest God, and makes the man
The likest Him and the consummate plan.
I cannot think, I would not, if it might
Be possible, this person is but clay
Compounded of the dust and low and slight,
Which takes the impress of each passing day,
Because it must from bondage unto ill,
And dares not upright stand and say “I will;”
Half educated brute, and half a toy
Or mere machine which darkly beats and babbles
And in the scorèd sand a moment scrabbles
Its epitaph, and dies without a joy.
For into me the currents flow, that leap
From under the pure feet of Him who shakes
The granite mountains to a shapeless heap,
And with the mighty moulding thought remakes
The suns and systems all; and from me breathes
Some fragrance of His own Diviner dresses,
That seamless robe of awful righteousnesses,
Wherein He walks and wherein He enwreathes
The tinest atom of the world; I feel
My heart doth echo back His tune,
Amid the uproar of the clanging steel,
And holds within it bright perpetual June
Rose-sweet and warm and with His air delicious,
Though round me moves and mows the clamorous throng
In seeming triumph of most deadly wrong—
Yet is this well, and sorrow most propitious.
I may not tell you why I claim the credo
Dearer than life and love, for words were weak
To syllable the truth if they did speak;
And who could tell his secret so? Could Guido
Give you the hidden mystery that throbs
And palpitates in glowing forms, and art
Which is himself and all his very heart?
The letter kills, the bald expression robs
The glamour of its honey, dew and bloom;
And as you seize the soul of things it perishes
Within your grasp and victory is doom,
And dust abides which some museum cherishes.
I cannot reason out this living faith,
Which burns in me and lifts me high to summits
And down the deep abysses beyond plummets,
Untrodden by the foot of man and known
To nothing mortal and yet most my own;
No phantasy or trick, no idle wraith
Upconjured by a vain imagining,
Or fraud. It mingles with the waft of heather
On tumbled hills, and low soft murmuring
Of many bees in spaces of blue weather;
I hear it in the purling of shy brooks,
The voice of children and the chant of birds
And laughing breezes in sequestered nooks;
It canopies my head like heaven, it girds
My loins with giant youth and bids me run
Rejoicing to the gateways of the sun.
I cannot get away from this, it follows
My flying steps from marble messages
Of fossil forms to lonely silences,
Where whispers Nature in the hush of hollows
Serener things to gentle minds; it falls,
My shadow, on the rim of storied chalices
Whence drank red lips of maidens fair and ripe
Long long ago, and on the broken walls
Of citadels where Time has carved its malices;
In quarried stone and mercy's healing stripe
It hath a portion and it leaves a trace,
And babies' dimples are its dwelling place.
Impossible it is, and therefore yet
In moonrise and the mist where suns have set
And left a golden gospel and the streak
Of glancing dawn which comes and yet comes not
And dallies with its opening door, I mark
Dim prophecies of that which doth not wreak
Its will entire in outwardness of lot
Material, but still touches all the dark
With dashes somewhere of its own divinity,
And is the soul of each young life's virginity.
But I am one with this, what'er it be,
Though in the brunt of brutal might and cunning
That send our blood and tears in rivers running,
Through every time and place, and in the breath
Of pleasure grimly pulse; this makes me free,
King of myself and the wide world and fate,
And bids me enter calm and crowned the gate
Predestined of the tomb, and builds of death
A stepping stone to grander heights. I hear
The murmur of this old and gracious verity,
In hope that singeth and sublimer fear
That reads earth's riddle though with pale temerity;
And in the grinding of the wheels that turn
For ever round and round, and carry men
And universal Nature forth and far
With their tremendous beats, and champ and churn
Our cosmic stuff to living soul or star,
To portals of some new supremer ken.
I cannot write you out a clear particular
Dry thesis framed by logic of my creed,
In loops and links of formulæ vermicular;
For with myself still doth it always grow,
And puts fresh petals out for every need
Of daily use; but in the night I know;
And if false rays should dazzle and deceive
Or nothing seem at last quite sure and noscible,
Yet in mid darkness shall I most believe
Because I am and Truth is so impossible.

THE MIDGE AND ITS MAKER.

THE CRY OF THE WORM.

MAN THE MAKER.

HOME SICKNESS.

BLIND HANDS.

MAN IS WHAT WOMAN MAKES HIM.

“WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN?”

CRUCIFIED AFRESH.

MY DIVINE FATHER.

CHRIST AND THE MURDERER.

Dear sinner, that poor red right hand which struck the fatal blow,
Was lifted against My command and Me it first laid low.
Betwixt thee and thy dreadful aim, because I loved thee best
And had the one eternal claim, I threw My bleeding Breast.
The knife beat back My mighty Love, wherein Thou hadst no part
Less than all wealth of Heaven above, and pierced this broken Heart.
Thy hatred vented most on Me its bitterness and wrath,
And flouted Mercy that set free as air the upward path.
I felt the fatal wound, that deep of guilty murder drank,
Opening the silent lands of sleep, and with thy victim sank.
The horror lay not upon him alone, which to Me cried;
I knew its presence cold and dim, and also truly died.
No homicidal thought could fail to stab, no stubborn pride;
Each angry feeling was a nail, which tore My tender side.
And every pulse of passion, made of wedded mocks and scorns,
Wove for My Head in awful shade another crown of thorns.
The cutting words were as the spear which racked My human Flesh,
And wrung from it the crimson tear and crucified afresh.
The very looks so base and black were harder than the rod,
They rained as tempest on My back and scourged the helpless God.
The strokes, the insults and the ire heaped on that slaughtered frame,
Yet kindled Me a burning fire of solitude and shame.
For I shall suffer in the law which justly takes thy breath,
And hang with thee and grimly draw new terrors out of death.

GOD OUR HOME.

It is not any mortal space nor tenderest human tie,
Wherein I have a resting place and infant-wise may lie;
Each earthy bond it's far beyond, and dearest when I die.
O softer than the sweetest, most blessed and the meetest
Of every link whereby we drink at fountains the completest!
The mother and her babe must part, although her breast be heaven,
And likest to God's own great Heart and with His holy leaven;
The bride in her pure bridal raiment must give at once the dreadful payment
With her young virgin charms,
If death should come and be the claimant,
And leave her bridegroom's arms.
But kingdoms to their doom shall tumble, and pass a shadow Rome;
Yea, heaven and earth in ashes crumble, and never touch my Home.
It is above the changeful sod nor mingled of the clay,
The awful Fatherhood of God which lights this ghastly play;
Whereon I find, in wave and wind, what cannot pass away;
A bulwark from the billow, a refuge and a pillow,
When friendships bright that take not flight bow as the weeping willow;
My darlings often from my side, in tears and woe and thunder,
Have gone with beauty and their pride and we were torn asunder;
The loves that I in weakness human did truly form with faithful woman
Have proved a bitter lot,
And I dismated was, and no man
Has lived and suffered not.
But if the suns and stars do dwindle and in another dome
New planets into glory kindle, God will abide my Home.

THE BURDEN OF EXPRESSION.

Dear Father,
The lesson which I read in all—
It thrusts its meaning on me rather,
In every rise and nobler fall—
Is nothing more than this;
By scarlet cheeks' confession
Or ballad or a kiss,
The burden of expression.
The person and the thing that court our seeing,
May nowise rot in idle rest,
But strive to utter forth their best
By simple being.
Though they may fight against the law
And never know it,
Nor sage nor poet,
And struggle on as helpless as the straw
Or feebly play
Within the energies of iron,
That do environ
And crush to better forms the foolish clay.
The sot, inmersed in sense, who rises up
With red and rheumy eyes to drink
And staggers daily on the brink
Of suicide, as 'twixt the crime and cup
He trembles;
Still in his blackest bout
Of basest orgies, lower than the beast,
Despite his hideous wallowings resembles
The maiden like a star
In brightness of her bloom tricked out
For bridal feast
With all the graces ready to her hand
And blushing over for a queen's command
Or conquest—but so far;
He seeks to say, as she, the life within
And stamp himself upon the frame external
Of the great Cosmos which he feels akin,
And like him part of the Eternal.
And in creation Thou dost dimly wreak,
Or sometimes clearly, just Thyself and speak
A word, a sentence,
Unto the listening heart
Which dwells in prayer apart;
And, lo, one hears and rushes to repentance.
The seasons,
They are Thy varying moods and modes
Which teach us more than fossil codes
The splendour of the Spirit's reasons;
And in the red leaf and the tumbling rain,
Thou art fulfilled by joy or pain
One ethical sweet moment.
The lover smarting from his loss
And groaning under the dear cross
Which carries him,
Though his poor tearful eyes are dim
And see no mercy, might have guessed the no meant
Thy mantle dashed before his gaze
And amorous grasp,
Awaking blindly but to clasp
The blessed haze.
The grim and gory
Lanes of long battle-fields where shot and shell
Have made a human hell,
That dupes turn glory;
These are Thy efforts marred by us
And mangled thus,
To show Thyself (though in distorted channels)
Written on the receptive panels
Of common Nature's canvas, wrought
Into incarnate thought.
Thy methods are not twain,
O God—O Father,
As I would call Thee rather—
Above mere bliss and pain;
The track of trial
Which purifies and moulds the penitent
In flames of self-denial,
And purpose of a self-development;
Commensal tasks and social aims,
And private claims;
The gloom of winter and blue skies of Florence,
Self-hate and self-abhorrence.
And Thou in us, O beautiful and best,
For all our carnal groping
And madness of warped will
Which cleaves to bitter dust and weds with ill,
Yet in each ray of hoping
Art manifest.
Perpetual contest of the ravening brute
Within us, chained a while but never mute,
Does not disturb the balance of all things
Which if unconscious pant
And press along a scale of many strings,
Still upward and co-operant
Somehow to some great final issue;
And foe alike and friend,
With every vital nerve and tissue
Are woven with the death and pride,
Though we see but their ragged side,
To the convincing and consummate End.