SABBATH EVENING LONG
AGO
I see the old home on the Sabbath night—
It smelt of heresy to call it Sunday,
A heathen name, although we held it right
To paganise the Saturday and Monday.
The cruse hung on the jamb, with poor rush pith
That, soaked in whale oil, dimly kept a-gleaming;
More shadows filled the room than lights therewith,
And how those wavering shadows set me dreaming!
A sea-coal fire glowed on the old Dutch slates,
And on the brown carved settle near the doorway,
And on a rack of willow-pattern plates,
And on a bronze-hued wooden bowl from Norway.
A mighty cauldron simmered by the fire,
Whereto our hungry eyes kept often turning,
For the much-preaching sharpened the desire
To satisfy the flesh we had been spurning.
In the big chair the father gravely sat,
And round the fire the household gathered quiet;
The dog wheeled round, and, coiling on the mat,
Slept through the lesson, profiting not by it.
And then we went right through the “Catechism,”
From “Man's chief end,” to “Amen” in conclusion—
Heaven's white light broken in a logic prism
To clear our thought, and end in dire confusion.
Mostly I did not understand at all,
And my mind wandering seemed to hear the shouting
Of comrades at a game of bat or ball;
But where I understood, it set me doubting.
So those high orthodoxies came to be
Quick seeds in me of heterodox opinion,
And, ere I wist, my thoughts were all at sea,
And drifted, holden by no wise dominion.
I knew not how those Westminster Divines
To Scots beyond the Tweed their faith had given,
But I rebelled to travel on those lines
Which made so hard and dark a way to Heaven.
Still the small mind chafed at the strenuous thought
Of those stern Puritans who faced, unwincing,
The darkest problems of our human lot,
And solved them with a text, as all-convincing.
But while the grave old father questioned on,
I marked his dome of forehead, time had wrinkled,
And to myself I kept my thoughts alone,
And the dog dreamed on, and the rushlight twinkled.
In him there was a faith serene and strong,
In me an unrest, like the rush of water;
Without, there was a Credo hard and long,
Within, there was a resolute Negatur.
Yet in his stern creed lay a tender heart,
The husk o'erlaid a wealth of human kindness
And love, that fain their wisdom would impart
To purge the young soul of its earthly blindness.
And it did store the mind with furniture—
In forms antique, forbidding peaceful slumber,
But morticed well, and fashioned to endure,
Hard to get into, or out of heads they cumber.
I wot not what our later faiths may do
For us, what time our troubled lives may need them,
But through that stern old creed a nation grew
Toughest and staunchest in the fight of freedom.
