Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Farewell, my Channing! I will call thee mine,
For love gives full possession. Two rich years,
Obscurely and unknown to thee, I've lived
Upon thy wealth of thought; and through each week
Have hunger'd, hunger'd for thy Sabbath feast.—
But thou art gone, as if the hand of death
Had on the instant beckon'd thee away.—
E'en through that sermon which became our last,
A hope possess'd me almost to the end;
But when the closing word fell from thy lips,
Methought the door of Heaven slamm'd in my face,
And left me outside weeping, thou within.—
That beauteous temple of thy ministry,
Its heavenward pillars and its pictured light,
Breathed inwardly the very soul of Art.
It was a living beauty—it is now
Only a splendid tomb, fill'd with regret.

And who of all thy creed—if creed be thine,
Whose universal heart has room for all—
Shall fitly fill thy place? Many will come;
And flowing essays, brimm'd with noble thoughts,
And very like to sermons, we shall have;
But who shall be the preacher? They will come;
And when they've pass'd the ordeal, we shall find
New laurel round thy name, and in our hearts
A deeper pang of grief. And adverse minds

That held thee as a dreamer, misty, vague,
Will, from the mere transparency that follows,
Grow doubly clear, and learn to read thy dreams.

However low our scale of mind, we think
That all beyond our easy reach is dream;
And he best pleases our conceit who says
Just what we know, or plainly comprehend.
Thus do we keep the comfortable plain.
But would we catch the beams that wake the soul
To new and wondrous life, choose him that takes
The panting heights; and though in cloud and mist
We lose him oft, yet, ever and anon,
The gleams break through, the misty curtain lifts,
And we behold our leader and his thought,
Standing all brightness on a sun-brow'd hill.

Ah, such wert thou! Thy theme, however low,
Soon beat the Heavenly chords: for God, the sum
Of all true preaching, was thy all in all.
If thou did'st ever harp upon that chord,
'Twas glorious sameness, and, like blessed bread,
Came with a daily sweetness. Thou would'st stand
Possess'd in thought, thy utterance half choked;
And we could almost fear thy burden'd thought
Was not for us, when lo! it came, like some
Rock-barrier'd spring, in unexpected ways.
No measured strain, of which, the first part given,
And we might end the sentence: it was more
An inspiration through thee, thou thyself

As much surprised as we. For thou wert still
The worshipper, and not alone the priest.

The thought unlived in giving it, falls dead—
It matters not how true it be. But thine
Came ever molten, burn'd with life, and fill'd
The heart in unknown depths.—And thine the aim
To knit up fritter'd lives, and give to each
The quickening truth that God has work for him;
That to the unknown meaning of the world
His life gives new solution; that within
The crucible of being he may drop
Some needed chemical. Ah, then, how great
The need of being faithful to his star,
That lode which draws his genius to fulfil
God's end in him, and reap the inward bliss
Which faithfulness matures through weal or woe.

Thine was no terror-God in far-off heaven,
But closely here, and, in the strictest sense,
Father and nourisher of living souls:
From whom in daily breakings-through of Truth,
And change of Beauty, we draw endless life.
For whatsoever thing wakes love in us—
E'en to the lowest appetite—does so
Because of God therein; and love is life.
Love most, live most; and he that highliest loves,
The highliest lives. We deem it strange that God,
Whom outward eye has never yet beheld,
Can be the object of our fullest love:

But who has ever seen the thing belov'd?
'Tis inward all; and when it passes forth
The visible's unlovable,—as earth
Would be unlovely dross did God withdraw.—
Things rise to truth and beauty in so far
As God lives freely through them. See that flower,
Whose natural conditions give no check
To the Divine inflowing, and what soul
Can get beyond its beauty? When I drink
The wonder from its cup, my brain is turn'd
To sweet stupidity. If simple plants
Live, and are beautified by God in them,
So, surely, man. He lives from God to God,
A constant inspiration; and the sole
Condition of his growth is evermore
Obedience to the inward voice of Right.

We pray for health and peace and all good things.
But if I rightly understood thy prayers,
They were for more of God and more of God—
The one true light that pales the rest, and gives
That perfect day our cravings blindly seek.—
God comes to us in every faithful act,
In every glimpse of beauty, in all Truth,—
But most immediately in lonely prayer.
True prayer, even while it asks, receives—
If not what most we seek, what most we need.
'Tis not so much a cause as a result;
And God is with us ere the lip be moved.
That we can pray is answer to our prayer.

To raise amidst our thoughts a little crypt,
Sacred to God, and through this porch of prayer,
Daily to enter, for the briefest term,
And leave outside our follies, strifes and sins,
Were sweet redemption and a growing Heaven
For us, who cannot, without ceasing, pray.

Thy every Sabbath gave us some new heart,—
The after week was upward. Thou art gone!
And in the stand-still of my grief I feel
The ground already slipping. On the heights
To keep our footing, is to climb and climb.
We cease to climb, the shingly slopes give way,
And we are passing downward.—Thou art gone!
And in our clouded ken, there's no one left
To tell us of the light beyond the clouds.—
Farewell! Could we not bravely lose thee now,
It would belie thy teachings: this our faith—
That God's true servants serve most by their loss.
The Christ that preach'd the Sermon on the Mount,
Began His ministry upon the Cross.