University of Virginia Library

TROMPETENRUF.

All awake, and fair summoned, at one trumpet-call,
All startled, all deafened, the great and the small.
What all? From the babe who but catches a gleam
Of the finis-doom'd sunlight's funereal beam
To the long-lost obliterate dead? We are men:
But God—will He know all his creatures again?
Those tribes, locust-black'ning the earth as they pass,
Of whom one can only take knowledge in mass;
The brain-budding beasts of the ages of Stone,
Who ate and who drank, and bequeathed useful bone,—
Ah, how will they neighbour? What wise will God blend
The first sketches of man with his consummate end?
The grand, child-soul'd warrior chief, passion'd for fame,
With the minds many-sided, too cultur'd for aim?
Those fable-begetting and wonderful-eyed
Early races of men in the earth's golden tide,
What marvels await them amid their compeers!
How their dreams are outleapt by the swift-running years!
The nature they timidly worshipp'd and wooed,
Behold by their fellows to service subdued!
Love-happy, obedient to man's master will,
She smiles at her iron-brain'd conqueror's skill.
And the women? Fair Eve with her serpent-sham'd grace
To her far-after daughter of long homag'd race;
Girlhood's prefacing charms in those slave-nymphs of old
To its perfected self, woman-bosom'd, man-souled?
These uttermost sever'd ones, how will they meet;
When God makes the list on His bead-roll complete?
Day by day, touch on touch, His creation arose;
Does His fair-order'd work find harmonious close
In this seizing of souls from warm bodies in breath
To judge side by side with the firstfruits of death?
But, confusion apart, it is odd God should keep
The dead of His love in long-centuried sleep:
No deep inner life-stir is granted to these;
They are not as live, winter-burgeoning trees;
But, stripp'd of the body, the soul is put by,—
All things come in useful,—meanwhile let it lie;
When the course of the spirit-quick ages is past,
The trumpet will shake it to hearing at last.
So, if it all chances as wiseacres tell,
At death we bid life and its Giver farewell,
To go to some lumber-room He will provide,
Till the house, many-mansion'd, give place at His side.
How wasteful, how blank all this waiting appears!
Doth God keep grim holiday myriad years?
Turn'd adrift from life's schoolhouse, His scholars remain
In the chill of the grave-mould and thick-driving rain!
And why should we dream He will care to renew
Old friendships long-broken, long kept out of view,
On the grand day of meet? Oh, too bitter for scorn
Is the yoke man hath made of His Maker and borne!
To think of this earth, full of mothers, and those
The grand mother-hearted to all human woes,
What a glorious ideal is fashioning there,
'Mid the meanness and sinning that make men despair!
There the father toils long for the children slow-taught,
There the sick are meek-tended, the dead kept in thought,
And each weak helpless thing hath its shield-scale of love,
Callow fledgling to warm-feathered wing; while above,
God to us?—Nay, these things are the rough outer guise
Of a deep-lying love that is hid from our eyes:
The mother hath master'd, the death-watcher known,
In part, the great yearning God hath for His own,—
His own by the birthclaim. Who giveth the breath
Must give the life-blessing. Who giveth the death
Must give its befitting completion, not lay
His half-finish'd beauteous creature away.
The night-falling shadows foretell the daybreak;
Who hush'd to the slumber will soon kiss awake.—
His herald a trumpet-blast startling and grim?
Not to war, to deep peace we are going, to Him
Who His earth-sleeping children so tenderly stirr'd
With the touch of the sunbeam, the voice of the bird.
Ah, would He but deal with us as He hath done,
But be to us what He hath been, we should shun
No longer the death-beck'ning hand; but 'tis said
He will change from that past when we chance to be dead;
And in the world-summoning Judge, terror-crown'd,
The likeness to Providence scarcely be found.
If Death did not change Him, what could make us afraid
To come face to face with the God we had pray'd?
Did the veil of the flesh so safe hide us? lo, He
To the heart's inmost places could utterly see,
Yet to Him in our troubles and sinfalls we came,
And knew we should find Him for ever the same;
Still stedfast our oft-wavering spirits to win,
Resistlessly earnest to root out our sin;
And ruthless in leaving the sting-thrust, or thorn,
By the pain-shrinking flesh to be patiently borne.
A grief-unremitting, prayer-vanquishing Friend,
Who would bid us endure in our tears to the end,
Fresh strength His sole succour; but tenderly still
Would suffer beside us, and win to His will.
And now—Who hath lov'd us, Who called us His own,
We shall see 'mid the chill heaven-breadths on a throne!
O to wake from the presence-room terror, and find
Thee, the piteous God of the life left behind:
The God of our childhood, Who wooed us, or e'er
For the mute lips that marvelled the mother made prayer,
Till we caught up the meaning of love, and grew bold
All our even then shroud-loving souls to unfold:
The God of our heartgriefs, to Whom we have brought
All peril of passion, all anguish of thought;—
The fast-growing love that thick-shadow'd must stay
(A glance from the world's Pharaoh-hearted would slay),
Though it starve in the shade of its sheltering reeds;
And Thou hast provided! or those deeper needs,
That still sorer trouble, the guilt-growing dread
Lest thy love be not all thy too-trusting have said:
Soon as found, each hard thought, treason-tinctur'd, of Thee
We have given Thee back, loyal-hearted, to see,
And Thou hast been gracious, unanger'd by doubt
Of a love we so sorely should sicken without,
And question through too much desiring. Lord, why
Should the friendship be broke when Thou biddest us die?
For Thee we have borne many deaths, and can bear;
Scourge, chasten, afflict us, but have us in care!
We ask not a ‘fainéant’ heaven to gain;
Young-limbed in endeavour, unshrinking from pain,
We look for fresh life-fields, fresh labours to share
With the dear earth-loved comrades, new-harvesting there.
O to work with our dearest once more by our side!
Can we spare it to leisure, that rich morning-tide
Of the day-bloom eternal? Nay, rather one kiss,
One deep folding of love, and we fall to the bliss
Of living, and loving, and serving, and feel
Through the broad-nation'd band the sweet unity steal
That centred our tiny home-circle, and joy
In our fresh-furnished youth, and its higher employ.
Short rest will suffice us. How sadly our cries
To Thee, the much-work-setting Master, must rise!
Lord, take the tools back, ere we learn the least part,
Unto patternless truth, of life's consummate art!
Each beginning is hard, this too irksome, and so
All the full artist-triumph and calm we forego,
And ask for inertness! More nobly for aim
Deep-rooted in purpose (the child found to blame
In the fret of his feverish haste), and for power
To work through slow years toward the perfected hour.
What, sicken for soul-ease? We seek to go higher,
Fulfilment to win for a larger desire.
New heavens, new earth, Thou wilt ope to our view,
Thou Thyself to our short-travelled eyes wilt be new!
We press earnest-hearted and eager to Thee,
Still eastward-eyed gazing toward what Thou wilt be,
And know it will differ as youth from old age;
Is the story the same when we turn o'er the page?
What futures await us? World-clusters in store
For thy star-seeking children Thou hoardest; all lore
Thou countest a pound-gaining servant, dost lay
With unsparing hand treasure-trove in the way
Of those who believe for the works' sake: we well
Can conceive how thy universe-students will dwell
(No light to their questioning vision denied),
Thee, its myst'ry-unravelling Master beside.
What daybreak of bliss on their faces! Not less
Thy faith-hardy, desert-soul-venturers bless,
Who have learnt Thee the heart fashion, friend unto friend;
Can life master such theme from beginning to end?
Or shall we not be thy most backward of all,
We, who spell out thy love, though the letters be small,
And Thou writest in characters painfully fine:
The big text on the wall was more clearly divine;
But we are beyond those first copies, and now
Do not learn by large letters, but study the how
Of the full-grown, and soul-guided hand, till our wit
Can learn what it hath, what men say it hath writ.
And shall we not have our reward? What, not find
New fields for deep search in the infinite mind?
Give rest to thy weary and pain-stricken; we
Of the soul's ‘Wanderlust’ ask far travel of Thee.
We ask Thee to be to us New World and Old;
The story to tell, and the story long told.
Nor need we that any should come to us, spies
From the outlying life that is hid from our eyes.
All hearsay were false; of such infinite news
The earth-dwindled, spirit-clipt from would confuse.
Toward Thee in the darkness undaunted we turn,
Soul to soul, one by one, its great wonder to learn.
Supreme in the goal-touch, Columbus in tread,
Each footprint fresh claims the new world of the dead.
No chart for Death's thick-travers'd ocean is found,
Bound for Thee, yet unknowing for what we are bound,
All blank in horizon, unpiloted, lone,
We seek a far country to spirit-dreams shown,
And the peril and trust-need ennoble: we take
Each night a like faith-asking voyage, and wake,
The sunbeams about us, till, trusting Thee quite,
Our eyes close in flush of the soft morning light.
So, when the Great Dark'ning draws on, let it be,
So, Lord, let us sleep, let us waken in Thee!
But lest on our heaven-weak vision at first
The sun-blooming air should too dazzlingly burst,
And the pure light perplex us, O turn to us then
The face Thou hast turn'd to the children of men!
Let thy dear earth-remembering pity recall
The joy and the pain Thou hast been to us,—all
Of the life that is lying between us, and lo,
With Thee to what future Thou wilt we can go.