Songs Old and New | ||
L'Envoi.
ROBINS AND THEIR SONGS.
What can this blithe music mean?
Like a hidden fount, thy singing
Seems to clothe the woods with green.
Here rewards thy faithful stay;
Sing'st thou, little homeless stranger,
For the crumbs we strewed to-day?
Soaring on to regions bright,
Singing in the richest sunlight,
Singing 'neath the starry night;
Of the southern woods at noon,
Filling all the flower-starred meadows
With the melodies of June.
Which like light the heart unfold,
Till it trembles and rejoices,
Growing deep that joy to hold;
Many-toned and deep and strong,—
Tones by which, like childhood's, quiver
Thy few notes of simple song?
Like a daisy among birds,
With a quiet glee did sing
Songs condensëd thus in words:—
Of the songs so full and fine;
Very faint would be God's praises
Sounded by no voice but mine.
Wakes it no responsive smile,—
Though the poet singeth after,
And the angels all the while?
Why I sing I cannot say;
Springeth in my heart all day.”
Lowly hearts to fill with song,—
Crumbs from off a festal table
Lowly hearts will join ere long.
With the snows gives snow-drops birth;
And while angels sing in heaven,
God hears robins sing on earth.
Music dieth in the dust;
Nothing that but creeps can sing,
All hearts that soar heavenward must.
The Women of the Gospels.
MINISTRY.
And all are in one Body bound,
In all the world the place is not
Which may not with this bliss be crowned.
Need not be laid aside from this,
But for each kindness gives again
“The joy of doing kindnesses.”
Not one lives only to receive,
But renders through the hands of Christ
Richer returns than man can give.
With love and gladness brimming o'er,
May for the weary veteran pour.
May yet this lowly joy preserve;
Love may make that a stepping-stone,
And raise “I reign” into “I serve.”
The loneliest life with blessings crowds,
Can consecrate each petty care,
Make angels'ladders out of clouds.
Our hearts for special ministry;
That creature best has ministered
Which is what it was meant to be.
By simply shining sun and star;
And we, whose law is love, serve less
By what we do than what we are.
And angels know no higher bliss,
Then with what good her cup is fraught
Who was created but for this!
MARY THE MOTHER OF OUR LORD.
I.
Yet none have fathomed all thy bliss;
Mothers, who read the secret best,
Or angels,—yet its depths must miss.
And prove His filial love thine own;
In all a mother's tender cares
To serve thy Saviour in thy Son!
That perfect life expand and shine,
And learn by sight, as angels may,
All that is holy and Divine!
From age to age, from land to land,
Gives to the lowliest Christian's hand,
Yet by that measure unexpress'd;
Sealing the mother's joy with “Yes,”
The Christian's, with His “rather bless'd.”
II. —THE MARRIAGE AT CANA.
Not for thy home that life-stream springs;
For thee then, too, the higher good
Must come through death of lower things.
With joys so hallowed and complete,
For Him no Father's House could be,
No limit for thy Saviour's feet.
Now calmly claims its sovereign place,
And takes a range of love Divine
Thy mortal vision cannot trace.
The words, and not the tone, we hear;
On thee, who knewest Him of old,
It casts no shade of doubt or fear.
And, bowing, wins His “rather bless'd;”
“Whate'er He saith unto you, do,”
Embracing as its rule and rest.
The widest sphere, the dearest home,
Save that where Christ is Lord and Light,
Were but at last the spirit's tomb.
Thou winnest joy, all joy above,—
The endless joy of being His,
And sharing in His works of love.
III. —THE MARRIAGE AT CANA.
Enriched the marriage feast with wine;
The Hand once pierced for sins of ours
This morning made the dew-drops shine;
Makes ice-drops beauteous as they freeze;
The Heart that bled to save,—that Heart
Sends countless gifts each day to please;
To paint the flower, to crown the feast;—
Deeming no sacrifice too much,
Has care and leisure for the least;
Not barely what the need may be,
But for the joy of making blest.—
Teach us to love and give like Thee!
But question daily all our powers:
To whose cup can we add a pleasure?
Whose path can we make bright with flowers?
IV. —THE CROSS.
The dearest love makes dreariest loss;
Stood by Him dying on the cross.
The day and not the night abide,
And all time's shadows, earthward cast,
Are lights upon the “other side;”
That darkest hour shall brighten on!
Better than any angel's “Hail!”
The memory of “Behold thy Son!”
The homage paid at Bethlehem,
But far more blessëd evermore
Thus to have shared the taunts and shame;
'Mid mocking crowds, and owned Him thine;
True through a world's ingratitude,
And owned in death by lips Divine.
V. —THE CROWN.
Our hearts behold thee crowned e'en now;
The crown of motherhood, earth's best,
O'ershadowing thy maiden brow.
Than ever poet's brows entwine,
For thine immortal hymn of praise,
First Singer of the Church, are thine.
Thy coronation pomp shall see;
The Hand by which thy crown is given
Shall be no stranger's hand to thee.
A better triumph ends thy strife:
Heaven's bridal raiment, white and clean,
The victor's crown of fadeless life.
No lonely pomp shall weigh thee down;
Crowned with the myriads round His throne,
And casting at His feet thy crown.
MARY MAGDALENE.
I.
Which sacred memories so embalm;
That Magdala and Galilee
Ring like the music of a psalm.
Clear shines each peak and golden spire,
And Hermon lifts his brow of snow
Unsullied to that sky of fire.
Full of the joyous stir of life,
And o'er the waves boats bounded light;
All was with eager movement rife.
Laughing with corn and countless fruits,
Bathing the oleander roots.
Those hills enshrined which circling stood,
Wild steeps which to men's homes brought near
The sanctity of solitude.
Earth poured her wealth, as evermore
Flows Jordan to the Sea of Death,
And leaves it bitter as before.
II.
It was no vision of the night,
No dim unreal mist, that veiled
The glad reality of light;
A skilful touch might tune again,
No jar of nerves too tightly wrung,
No shadows of an o'erwrought brain;
Spirits whose touches left a stain,
Owning no shrine of solitude
Their blasphemies might not profane:
Real as the heaven they had lost,
Real as the soul they kept from God,
From torture still to torture tossed.
No stillness dwelt for her in night;
And human love could yield no balm,
And home no deep and pure delight;
Not from unconscious azure skies,—
The morning that her spirit woke
Beamed from the depths of human eyes.
Scattered that company of hell;
It was a Voice from which they fled,
A Voice they knew before they fell.
And silence all her soul possessed;
When the same voice commanded rest.
Such silence had for bliss sufficed;
What was it, then, from hell to wake,
And wake beneath the smile of Christ!
III.
This crowning joy was not denied,—
To hear His voice from day to day,
And tread this earth still by His side:
The white-walled cities crowned the rocks,
Or peasants' dwellings far below,
Couched round the fountains like their flocks.
The dulness of blind eyes replace;
When learning first the joy of light,
For the first sight they saw His face.
From dumb lips, uttering His name;
She saw men's homes from shore to shore
Break into sunshine where He came.
(She knew the anguish and the bliss!)
She saw the baffled Pharisee,
And felt, “Man never spake like this.”
The Godhead they had fain denied;
She saw the little children press
With fearless fondness to His side.
Light up the widow's face at Nain;
She never saw one sent away,
She never heard one plead in vain.
And toil those gracious eyes bedim,
Thirsting and hungered, homeless, poor,—
She saw and ministered to Him.
And strength reknit each wearied limb,
A woman's service succoured Him!
Must earth be of that joy bereft?—
The sights and sounds are here no more,
And yet the very best is left.
And tread this earth as by His side;
May see Him work from day to day,
As in His presence we abide:
The bowed and fettered heart set free;
May succour, serve, and sacrifice,
And hear from heaven His “unto Me.”
IV. —DURABLE RICHES.
Finds some soft nest to greet it made,
The hunted beast has yet its lair;—
He had not where to lay His head.
But has its treasured things to share;
Its little store of legacies
Love hoards thenceforth with sacred care.
E'en the poor garments which He wore
Were shared by strangers ere He died,
For their own worth, and nothing more.
Vineyards and fields of other men,
Pilgrims beside the Son of God,
Had royal grants enriched them then?
They stood once more on Olivet,
And town and village 'neath them lay,
Gems in their vines and olives set,—
They owned those hills or valleys o'er,
Yet, when Christ lifted up His hands
And bless'd them, were those Christians poor?
Where every knee to Him shall bow,
Had they been richer then, or now?
V.
The weary day at length had fled:
What Sabbath could again be blest
Since He who promised rest was dead?
Night on its sleeping millions lay
Like the “great stone” upon His tomb—
What if it never rolled away!
No darkness from her heart could hide:—
The tomb in which the Lord was laid
Was near the cross on which He died.
The tortured form no more she saw;
Nor dropped one letter of the law;
Strange discord through their measured prayer;
And who, when death those lips made white,
Could silence the reproaches there?
And calmly kept her ordered course,
Bearing the cross of God the Son,
And in her heart His lifeless corpse:
Nor yet the brand of Cain doth bear;
Because, through His surpassing grace,
That cross pleads not “Avenge,” but “Spare.”
VI.
Prophet through love's tenacity,
Powerless to hope, she yet adored,
And felt the truth she could not see.
All that God is, all man may be,
Living the truth else guessed by none,
Through years of patient ministry;
Whom she had followed day by day,
And worshipped more, the more she knew,
Could fade to cold unconscious clay;
Extinguished, never more should beam,
What joy could endless days above
Bring ever more, not bringing Him?
Their radiant forms and raiment white,
If dead within a sepulchre
He lay, Himself the Life and Light?
Which could have firmly spanned the gulf,
Love prostrate o'er the chasm leant,
And bridged the dark abyss herself.
VII.
Was all the world she cared to own,
An empty tomb, vain balms and myrrh,
Tears with no heart to shed them on.
Immortal, glorious, yet the same;
The voice the fiends once fled in fear
Now spoke the old familiar name.
She had no words the joy to greet;
She said but “Master!” as of old,
And rested silent at His feet.
A music more profound and sweet
Than when, as from His heart to thine,
Thus “Mary!” and “Rabboni!” meet.
VIII.
The Easter message, ever new;
The grave is but a ruined prison,—
Invincible, the Life breaks through.
In her dark depths the tiniest seed;
When life begins to throb and stir,
The bands of death are weak indeed.
Calmly it makes its path to-day;
One germ of life is mightier
Than a whole universe of clay.
Bursting earth's wintry dungeons dim,
But lived at His creative word,
Responsive to the life in Him.
Thus triumphs over death and earth;
The Fountain whence all life has birth?
Breathes still the resurrection song,
That light the victory shall gain,
That death is weak, and life is strong;
The lowliest life that faith has freed
Bears witness still that Christ is life,
And that the Life is risen indeed.
SALOME.
At His right hand and left to sit;
How great the glory, passing thought,
How rough the path that led to it.
But He their deeper sense distilled;
Gently the selfish wish unmasked,
But all the prayer of love fulfilled.
And heard but of the bitter cup;
Love would but to her Lord be nigh,
And won her measure full, heaped up:
Stood on the mountain by His side,
Stood close beneath Him when He died.
The second of His martyr-band;
One, by His glory smitten low,
Rose at the touch of His right hand.
We crave the thing that should not be,
God, reading right our erring text,
Gives what we would ask, could we see.
THE WIDOW OF NAIN.
Whose pomps Thy daily works excel;
The rock which breaks the stream, but renders
Its constant current audible;
Works ever silently in light;
And mightier than these special wonders,
The wonders daily in our sight;
They let the inner light shine through;
The rent is new, the light is old,
Eternal, never ever new.
The bearers of that bier at Nain,
Warm on unnumbered hearts it rests,
Though yet their dead live not again.
On this our tearful earth once heard,
For every age with comfort fraught,
Tells how Thy heart is ever stirred.
She feels Thy touch through countless springs,
And, rising from her wintry bier,
Throws off her grave-clothes, lives and sings.
This bier whereon our race is laid,
And, for the first time standing still,
The long procession of the dead
Young, deathless, freed from every stain;
When Thy “Weep not!” shall wipe away
Tears that shall never come again;
And lips long dumb begin to speak,
What name will each then utter first?—
What music shall that silence break?
THE SYROPHENICIAN.
He knows what strain her faith will bear;
Low in the valleys flows His grace,
He does but gently lead her there.
And meets her nothing with His all.
Creation lives upon the crumbs
Which from that Master's table fall;
For thee the heavenly homes are built;
Thy portion is the children's bread,
And “Be it to thee as thou wilt.”
THE SISTERS OF BETHANY.
I.
When first they sent His help to crave,
So sure that, hearing, He would come,
And, coming, could not fail to save!
Deeming Him near and yet more near;
Till hope, on heights she climbed in vain,
Lay frozen to a death-like fear:
The expected steps, the failing breath,
Till hope and fear, together spent,
Sank in the common blank of death.
Beyond that awful glittering sea,
Mid those blue mountains lingering still,
Have our faint prayers not reached to Thee?
To Thee, whose eyes survey the whole,
But passing things of little worth,
That should not deeply stir the soul?”
For every mourning heart for ever;
And we, who now His words can hear
Beyond the hills, beyond the river,
On those far heights, as at their side,
Feeling the tears the sisters wept,
Marking the hour the brother died.
E'en now His feet are on the way,
With richest counter-weight of bliss
Heaped up for every hour's delay;
Make sick the heart which trusts in Him.
But, nourished by His faithful Word,
Grow brighter still as sight grows dim.
II.
To any Christian's heart is thine!
Hidden beside the Master's feet,
Lost in that dearer light to shine;
The sermon of thy listening looks,
Learning religion from thy gaze
Better than from a thousand books.
While from His lips thy name distils,
And, dropping like thy precious balm,
Ever His house with fragrance fills.
III.
Which looked the spirit “through and through,”
Which penetrated each disguise,
And would not let us be untrue;
The little spring of good below,
And pierced the icy crust of pride,
That happy, humble tears might flow;
The evil thing by gentle name,—
For sinners founts of pitying tears,
But for the sin unquenchëd flame;
On which to lay the healing touch;
That had no pity for the sin,
Because for those who sinned so much;
Yet, by his curses unperplexed,
Looked through them to the light, and read
The traces of the earlier text;
“Thou know'st I love Thee” still could trace,
In graven characters inwrought,
No darkest stains could quite efface;
The true direction of the will,—
Saw self with Martha's service mixed,
And love in Mary's sitting still.
Still pitying “look us through and through,”
And through the broken sketch we are,
Foresee the heavenly likeness true;
The creature of the dust descry,
Yet 'neath the shapeless chrysalis
The Psyche moulding for the sky.
THE UNNAMED WOMEN.
I.
The veil, which from unloving sight
Those shrinking forms avails to hide,
With tender care has wrapped it tight.
Once fondly spoken in a home,
A mark for strangers' righteous blame,
Branded through every age to come.
As those on whom His mercies meet,—
“She whom the Lord would not condemn,”
And “She who bathed with tears His feet.”
First heard where sins no more defile,
And consecrated by His smile.
II.
Feet wearied then for us so oft;
She wiped them with her flowing hair,
Embalmed with reverent touches soft.
Those sacred feet had yet to tread,
Nor how the nails would pierce one day
Where now her costly balms were shed.
To peace transmuting her despair;
She could not read what agonies
Must cloud the heaven she gazed on there.
But breathed not what His own must be,
Which made her pardon flow so free.
Who little knew the depths of His;
If then indeed she “loved” Him “much,”
How, since she knows Him as He is?
III.
All other eyes of righteous men,—
Avoided hers with virtuous pride,
Nor could she meet their gaze again.
That virtue of the Pharisee,
Only in its negations strong,
Ceasing to freeze might cease to be.
As tender flowers a touch may kill,
Scorched if winds breathe too fervently,
Nipped if they chance to blow too chill.
That never stain nor change could know,
No earth-born flowers, however fair,
But the pure light which made them grow;
But streams most fresh in freest flow;
The living love, whose pureness dwelt
Not in its coldness but its glow.
IV.
He felt each ministering touch,
He marked each gift she offered there,
He cared that she should love Him “much.”
The happy to the wretched fling;
He prized her love, her tears, her balms,
Then life was yet a precious thing;
Precious each moment which might bring
Some privilege of sacrifice,
Some vase to break in offering.
Gives by His measure, not by ours;
By life means not mere being, but bliss,
Free exercise of joyful powers.
Is freedom of His home above;
Not merely liberty to be,
But liberty to serve and love.
V.
The sinless lips have said ‘Forgiven;’
Pardon is then a right Divine,
And love indeed the law of heaven.
What spell can seal the memory fast?
The Almighty cannot change the past.
In pity may refuse to see;
But what can make my memory white?
What veil can hide myself from me?”
And read the blessed secret there;
The pardoning love from guilt that frees,
By loving thee shall make thee fair.
Has yet to be to thee revealed;
Blood from that tender heart must flow,
And thus thy bitter streams be healed.
Then search the past thy guilt to see;
Instead, this sight shall meet thine eye,—
Thy Saviour on the cross for thee!
VI.
In bridal raiment white and clean,
The spirit's bridal robe of peace,
Sign of the inward grace unseen.
Effacing every stain of sin,
Flows through thy spirit evermore,
A well of heavenly life within.
Familiar names which once were thine,
With all the old attraction strong,
Embrace thy soul from lips Divine.
Floats down on thee the name of child,
From love beyond the mother's love
Which on thy guiltless childhood smiled.
And the great marriage-day is there,
And from the heavens a Bride descends,
Thou, clothed in white, the bliss shalt share.
THE TWO ALABASTER BOXES.
I.
Didst pass a stranger through Thy land,
Two costly gifts were offered Thee,
And each was from a woman's hand.
Twice fair and precious things they bring;—
Pure sculptured alabaster clear,
Perfumes for earth's anointed King.
One for the stain of too much sin,
Yet both availed Thy smile to win.
The sinner sinners scorned to touch,
Adoring in Thy presence meet,
Both pardoned and both loving much.
Man's highest style is “much forgiven;”
And that earth's lowest yet may reach
The highest ministries of heaven.
From hearts sin beggared yet may pour;
And that love's costliest sacrifice
Is worth the love, and nothing more.
II.
Her weights and measures pass in heaven;
What others lavish on the feast,
She to the Lord Himself hath given.
She through all else to Him hath sped,
And unreproved His feet hath kissed,
And spent her ointments on His head.
She breaks the box, and gives her all;
Yet not one precious drop is missed,
Since on His head and feet they fall.
She at His feet sits glad and calm;
In all her lavish gifts no waste,—
The broken vase but frees the balm.
Since beyond time her gold is good;
Stamped for man's mean “three hundred pence,”
With Christ's “She hath done what she could.”
In what she sows and what she reaps;
She lavishes her all on Christ,
And in His all her being steeps.
Songs of Many Seasons.
THE BIRD, THE CHORISTER, AND THE ANGELS.
I.
Brimful of delight.
For his joy the bird found day too narrow,—
Poured it into night.
For one little nest,
Filling all the region with its sweetness,
Floated East and West.
Dullest hearts were stirred;—
Hidden in his own light-sphere of rapture
Little recked the bird.
Rapturously alone,
He but sang for one.
II.
Clothed within with joy,
As without in whitest raiment festal,
Carolled, glad, the boy.
Rose that one pure voice,
Clear as church-bells through a city's murmurs
Pealed “Rejoice, rejoice!”
Free as any bird,
Raining thence in showers of rapturous music,—
Dullest hearts were stirred.
In a spell-bound throng.
While the child sang praise to God Eternal
Men but praised the song.
III.
Weeping, weeping, on his bed at even,Weary sobbed the boy,
“All the joy is gone from all my singing,
All the old, free joy!
Like a roof of stone, the people's praises
Shut me from the light!
Take, oh take the praise away, and give me,
Give the lost delight!
Soars my voice, my heart can soar no longer,
Now no longer free!
Like a discord grating through Thy praises
Jars the praise of me!
Oh! that like a little bird unnoticed,
I might sing to Thee!”
IV.
Till to sleep he wept!
Loving, loving, watched above the angels
Smiling as he slept.
From their vision kept!)
Song and glory swept.
Speechless ecstasy,
All the worlds were looking up to listen,
He looked up to see.
In his dream, the boy
Drank for one unutterable moment
Of the Well of Joy,
Wakes the world's great hymn,
Felt it, one unutterable moment
Bent in love o'er him;
In that look felt heaven, earth, men, and angels
Distant grow and dim;
In that look felt heaven, earth, men, and angels
Nearer grow in Him.
V.
Sang he, glad and free,
Worlds within one tree,
With the freedom of the holy angels
The face of God who see.
Rapturously alone!
Thousand thousands to the Song might listen,
He but sang for One!
By His love made free;
Singing thus for One, for all was singing,
Lifting all to Thee!
THE ALPINE GENTIAN.
Long had lain sleeping,
When she looked forth at last,
Timidly peeping.
All round her slept;
O'er the dead icy ground
Cold shadows crept.
Still, frozen seas—
What could her young life do
'Mid such as these?
Not a warm breath;
What hope lay there for her
Living 'midst death?
Gazed she on high;
White clouds were wandering
Through the blue sky.
Gentle beams kissed her;
On her the mild moon shone
Like a saint sister.
Danced in sweet mirth;
The warm heavens seemed nearer far
Than the cold earth.
Loving on high;
Till she grew heavenly,
Blue as the sky.
Near which she grew,
Thawed in her skyey bells
Fed her with dew.
Gazing abroad,
Thinketh of God;
Hearts to God given
Breathe out where'er they go
Summer and heaven.
THE OLD STONE CRUCIFIX AT ROMSEY ABBEY.
Its characteristic is an open hand, reaching down out of the clouds above the Cross. This is said to be unique.
Close to the old church door
And by the common pathway,—
Appealing evermore.
The features need not miss;
Low, that the lips of the children
May reach the feet to kiss.
Wrought by the hands of old,—
(Good hands which so many ages
Have helpless grown and cold,)
Born of the heart of old,
Shall never more grow cold.
By no great artist's touch,—
Yet search the wide world over,
You will find no other such.
From freezing to burning zone,
You will never find another
Quite like this only one.
In the hands they crucified,
So deep you scarcely see them
But only the arms stretched wide,—
Though it seem in lightnings hurled,
Wide as the sin HE beareth,
Wide to embrace the world.
Bowing itself to die,
Forth from the clouded sky.
HIS hands are nailëd fast,—
“Into Thy hands My spirit,
Father, Thy hands!”—at last!
Within Thy hands to be,
Give us some such dear likeness
To leave behind of Thee.
Cut in the common stone,
Poor, yet our best, we pray Thee
Our best and our very own.
We dare to ask much more,
Knowing, the more we ask Thee,
Thou art but pleased the more.
By the common paths, like this;
The features may not miss;
Low, that the lips of the children
May reach to cling and kiss.
So deep in the wounds may hide,
That men see no more the anguish,
But only the arms stretched wide.
Cut in the common stone;
Like Thee, yet like no other,
Because Thy very own.
ON A VASE OF ORIENTAL ALABASTER ILLUMINATED FROM WITHIN.
All unillumined in the common day,
We know thee now, and evermore shall know,
Rose-alabaster, and no common clay.
It did but show thee as thou ever art,
The purple depths, the rose of dawn are there,
The glow and beauty of the fervent heart.
Ever anoint our eyes that we may see;
The best we see in those we love the best,
They ever are, indwelling Love to Thee.
They ever are, O patient Love to Thee,
Who through each lingering pain and fiery test
Art making us what Thou wouldst have us be.
THE POET OF POETS.
Who penetrated all He saw,
To whom the lily had its worth,
And Nature bared her inmost law.
And when the mountain side He trod,
The universe before Him shone,
Translucent in the smile of God,
Like young leaves in the morning sun,
Glory which Phidias never won
To consecrate his Parthenon.
The visions of His waking sight,
The thoughts that o'er His soul would throng
Alone upon the hills at night;
What poet's loftiest ecstasies
Had stirred men with such rapturous awe
As would those living words of His,
Calm utterance of what He saw!
All ages with their echoes rung.
He came to live, He came to die;
Living a long lost race to seek;
Dying to raise the fallen high.
He came, Himself the living Word,
The Godhead in His person shone;
But few, and poor, were those who heard,
And wrote His words when He was gone;
Words children to their hearts can clasp
Yet angels cannot fully grasp.
Like rain-drops on the parched green,
A living race of poets sprung,
Who dwelt among the things unseen;
Who loved the fallen, sought the lost,
Yet saw beneath earth's masks and shrouds;
Whose life was one pure holocaust,
Death but a breaking in the clouds;
His volume as the world was broad,
His Poem was the Church of God.
THE POET'S DAILY BREAD.
He is not mailed from Time's rude blows in a panoply of dreams.
But he must tread the common earth, mingling in common crowds.
But he must handle common tools to his diviner use.
Borne freely on its winds and waves he feels their every motion.
It is the sun which shines on all, the light of common day.
A glory in God's meanest works which passeth fiction far.
And angel whispers come to him from mute and common things.
And filling still her daily round with the old quiet grace,
His youth's strong passion growing ripe in deep home-tenderness.
By the sweet voice of one we love, do but the surer soften.
Yet knowing what a labyrinth life, how dim the inward eye,
Or aught which has fed human hearts as common or unclean.
No special banquet is for him at life's full table dressed.
The shower of cordial laughter which the clouded bosom clears;
All of the world that is not husks,—this is the poet's food.
Not all man's hackneyed renderings can make it less Divine.
TWO MEANINGS OF FAME.
I.
As something that ought to be seen,
A Crowned Head, without the sentries
Which vexatiously fence a Queen;
A foreign untamable creature,
Which will not be stared at, through bars,
By the eyes which pursue the meteors,
But heed not the steadfast stars.
Two thousand years wiser grown,)
On a pinnacle of the Temple,
With no power to cast yourself down;
No angels to keep your footsteps;
Human, unshaded, alone,
And vainly wish yourself stone!
With its strength but as before,
For a soul ever craving perfection,
And a world ever clamouring “more.”
II.
Where your feet will never tread,
Where your name is reverently spoken
As the name of their sacred dead.
'Tis a life in the hearts of thousands
You have struck to a living glow,
Who never hope to see you,
Whose names you will never know;
Could not utter their homage true,
Being but of the slow, dumb millions,
Whose thought wakes to music through you;
Who find the world wider and fairer,
Old truths made living and new,
Nobler for ever through you!
Deathless as Beauty and Truth,
As the old world still fondly cons over
The names she loved in her youth;
And finds the Founts of her Eden
Spring fresh, at your touch, as when first
At the rod of her first Diviners
To music and light they burst:
Traces deep in the ages afar,
When she fathoms and spans the Ocean,
And measures and weighs the star,
As when one Ocean-river
Bathed all the lands in its tide;
Since, at last, the world grown wider,
Finds a Poet with vision as wide.
Better known can but seem more fair!
Not light robs the world of its beauty,
But earth-fogs of pride and care!
'Tis a music whose ocean-thunders,
Sound they ever so long and loud,
At the height of a summer cloud.
Beyond heaven's farthest sun,
If at length earth's million voices
Die into one “Well done!”
THE GOLDEN AGE IN THE PRESENT.
The “good old times” that come no more?
The oldest day was once to-day;
Each hour wore in its settled place
As every-day a garb and face
As those which glide from us away.
On every dawning soul she dawns anew,
And grows and ripens with their growth:
Only to spirits which have lost their youth,
The heart of love and sense sincere and true.
Her living forms seem cold.
To poets is the poetic age not fled;
Go, let the dead inter their dead,
For to the living there is always life.
To pour into the artist's heart;
To eyes fresh bathed in morning dew
The Golden Age shines ever new.
Than when the sea-nymphs danced upon the wave?
Curve they less proudly 'neath the swift ship's prow,
Upheaving from the coral cave?
At noon-tide bathing weary feet,
Languidly smiling,
Softly beguiling,
Like lips that faintly move
Murmuring words of love?
Dewing with green the grassy dell,
Giving the thirsty flowers to drink,
Filling their starry eyes with joy,
Shedding cool fragrance on the air,
Than when the wood-nymphs sported there?
Wave in the breeze less lightly
Than when the Naiad's moonlit veil
Streamed through the dark trees brightly?
Has morning a less rosy glow?
Are noonday's arrowy rays less keen
Than when Apollo strung the bow?
The sun with kisses wakes the earth,
And sun-born showers of golden rain
With floods of melody pour forth,—
Say, are not Light and Music one again?
The heroes were but brave and earnest men;
Do thou but hero-like pursue thy track,
Striving, not sighing brings them back again!
God's words and works in spite of toil and shame;
So thou forsak'st it not to seek for them.
Strength to none weaker than thyself impart?
Rise! kindle in thyself the hero's heart,
And the heroic age is also there.
The childish days of love and trust;
There never was an Age of Gold,
And faith makes gold of all earth's dust.
The Church's youthful strength grows never gray,
Herself a fadeless youth amidst the world's decay.
Canst thou not love? Has earth no room
For all thy heart would give,
With all the blessed depths of home,
And myriad hearts that weep and strive?
Are there no desolate and poor
To nourish from thy store?
No songs of joy and glowing praise
Thy voice might help to raise?
No heart long left alone
Till it grew stiff and chill
Thy voice might waken with a thrill
Of love long, long unknown?
The yearnings of thy love?
Is there not heaven above
As near thee as of old?
His presence now withhold,
That the first works should e'er be lost,
Or the first love grow cold?
Oh, fill thy heart with God, and thou shalt prove
That there is left enough to trust and love!
Mirrored in still pools peacefully?
The future but the same to-day
Reflected in a heaving sea?
Only the present hour has life,
The home of work, the field of strife.
But press the Present to thy breast;
In her, thy soul shall find its bread,
Thy mind its sphere, thy heart its rest;
Till God shall speak another “Let there be,”
And Time, like darkness before light, shall be
Before the Now of His Eternity.
SUGGESTED BY THE PROMETHEUS BOUND.
No pity with their task was blent;
Thy cup of anguish was unmixed,
And human hands Thy hands transfixed,
O Thou who lovedst man!
With “countless laughter” dimpled o'er,
But heavings of an angry sea
Of human faces mocking Thee,
O Thou who lovedst man!
But mockeries and murmurings;
No depths divine of azure sky,
But darkness dread received Thy cry,
O Thou who lovedst man!
Earth's first true peal of victory,
Hushing the world-old blasphemy
That God gives good reluctantly,
O God who lovedst man!
Willing the Father's loving will,
And lifting off the load of sin
Let the free tide of love flow in,
O Thou who lovedst man!
For Life and Light in Thee are one;
Thy bonds have made the fettered free,
And man unbound Love binds to Thee,
O Thou who lovest man!
THE BETRAYAL OF THE YUCATAN ISLANDERS.
I.
None had ever seen its shore;
And living things,
With grand white wings,
Those white-limbed strangers bore.
Like the white-winged clouds o'erhead.
We said, ‘They come
From the far-off Home,
Where rest our happy dead.
Where our belovëd go,
Cleansing their souls
Where the thunder rolls
O'er the fields of ice and snow!
Where our belovëd rest;
Where they rest in light
All pure and white,
'Neath the morning's golden breast.’
Our reverent trust they won,
This Royal Race
From the Dawn's own place,
These Children of the Sun.
They held the winds their slaves;
In their sea-towers caged;
They rode on the foaming waves.
We thought they were good and true;
We said, ‘They will tell
Where our lost ones dwell,’
For we thought they all things knew.
They answered grave and slow:—
‘Trust us; we come
From that far-off home;
With us to your Dead ye shall go.’
For we trusted the words they said;
We feared not the thunder,
Caged, sullen, under;
For we went to rejoin our dead.
Those treacherous billows o'er,
To those unknown strands,
For a clasp of the hands
We had feared to clasp no more;
We had feared not to hear again:
For we thought, ‘Even thus
They are watching for us,
Watching across the main.
On lonely cliff or shore,
Or with flowers and song
In a festive throng,
To part from us never more?’
Trusting, across the main,
Till we reached the strand,
Where they drove us to land
With laughter, and lash, and chain.
The stranger's stripes and jeers;
For the promised Home,
The slave's dark doom,
And toil without time for tears.
We are breaking their fetters fast;
From that long, safe sleep,
Where we join our Dead at last.”
II.
From the shores none living know,
And over the sea
Biddest us with Thee
To our belovëd go;
Silent Thou trodd'st the wave,
Hushing its strife;
But Thy touch was life,
Death was Thy fettered slave.
When Thou saidst, “Its shore I know;
Trust Me: I come
From that far-off Home;
Follow Me,—to your dead ye shall go.”
Left all for Thee, content;
Trusting Thy word,
Singing and glad they went.
What terror of hearts death-cold,
Has raved that from Thee
Such wrong could be
As this base wrong of old!
Infinite by Thine Heart;
The deeds Thou hast done
A world have won;
We trust Thee for what Thou art!
Of that mysterious shore;
But we seek not a Place,
We seek Thy face,
And we crave to know no more.
Yet singing and glad we go:
Faithful and True
Thou wilt bring us through;
If not, Thou hadst told us so.
THE PATHWAYS OF THE HOLY LAND.
Since Thou wert there;
The busy world through other ways has ranged,
And left these bare.
Of Olivet;
Though rains of two millenniums wear it deep,
Men tread it yet.
Quiet and low;
Before his sheep the shepherd on it treads,
His voice they know
As once o'er Thee;
To Bethany.
From height to height
The white roofs of discrowned Jerusalem
Burst on our sight.
Which we tread thus;
Here through Thy triumph on Thou passedst, calm,
To death;—for us!
Of Galilee;
But chiselled in the hill-sides evermore
Thy paths we see.
Nor time effaced;
Where Thou hast stood to heal, we still may stand;
All can be traced.
Truer than these;—
Thy steps faith sees.
Thou art not dead!
Our path is onward, till we see Thy face
And hear Thy tread.
In praise and prayer,
There is Thy presence, there Thy Holy Land,—
Thou, Thou art there!
WAITING.
With a burst of sudden thunder, or the trickling of quiet rain.
And the thrill of life will vibrate to our utmost budding shoots;
From the snowy mountain-ranges the sound of joy will come,
And from the unchained glaciers the river of life will burst;
For the light and the life must conquer, and the dead must live again.
Awaiting the vanished Presence, and the Life which is to come.
THE POWER OF LIFE.
Yet the old leaves will not fall;
If they do not hasten, the young leaves
Will find no room at all.
Like the winds in their autumn-play,
Till the dead leaves fall in showers,
Together, all in a day?
And pluck them one by one,
That the baby leaves may stretch themselves,
And be glad, and feel the sun?”
Thus singly, my child, away;
'Twould need a stronger arm than thine
To sweep them down in a day.
They've something left to do;
Maybe the poor old withered leaves
Still cradle and shelter the new.”
And the birds on every tree;
Will God send a mighty tempest
To set the young leaves free?”
The old Earth knows her way;
And the Lord of Life is working,
He is working every day.
He will send them yet again;
The winds, and storms and lightnings,
With the sweeping floods of rain.
In His, but not in ours;
No hand may wield the lightnings
But the hand that folds the flowers.
But has stronger powers than they;
He is working every day.
Peeped from the old leaf's stalk,
And all through the noisy winter
It heard the wild winds talk.
How they swept the dead away,
But it only kept growing, growing;—
It could wait, it was stronger than they.
That shielding sheath within,
Growing, silently growing
Through all the storm and din;
When the sunbeams all awake,
They will touch it, will softly kiss it,
And its last slight fetters break.
The young spread glad and green,
Without a veil between.
And His strongest force is life;
Ever with death it wageth
Silent, victorious strife.
The warp and woof of the world,
The nights when the forces are gathered,
The dawns with their banners unfurled.
And needs but an open field;
And Love is stronger than Hatred,
And Love will never yield.
And life is His living breath,
And one breath of life is stronger
Than all the hosts of death.
And life is His living breath,
And the pulses of life gain vigour
'Neath the shroud and the sleep of death.
THE LAST ENEMY.
He is coming before the night;
Ere to-night the battle must be;
It may be while noon is bright.
I knew not this Dread must come;
Then each dewy flower seemed a world
With its sun of joy impearled,
Yet the farthest star a home.
And the boundless bounded grew,
The countless stars seemed few;
For I felt the world's cold rim—
I saw where the light grew dim,
And I thought evermore as I went,
“At the next turn of the path,
So familiar, so like the last,
And the homely thrifty bees,
And the birds to their nests flitting past,
Familiar shadows cast,
This strange new shadow may fall,
His shadow may shadow them all.
And ere I can lift my eyes,
Not only blossom and tree,
But the sun, and the earth, and the sea,
All I can hear or see
Like a shadow behind me lies:
Nor only the things I see;
But ye, beloved, ye!
Ye may grow shadows to me:
And I a shadow to you,
A shadow one hour or two;
Then less than a shadow, a dream,
Less than a dream I may be,—
A dream's faint memory.
The end of the Fight I know.
He will conquer, not I;
He will come and lay me low.
To many I knew he drew nigh,
And with all it ended so.
Confront him with hand and eye:
Perhaps I shall hope to the last;
But he will conquer, not I.
He has stricken not one alike.
To some like a Beast of Prey
He has come in the still noon-day,
From the quiet reeds by the pool,
From the forest calm and cool,
With a sudden spring and a cry,
Swept in a breath away;
Or eagle-like from on high
With a sudden swoop and no cry,
From the calm of a cloudless sky.
Fabled by those of old,
Lulling them softly to sleep,
Lulling them down to the deep,
To the darkness and the cold.
As I sit at my work alone.
His terrible eyes on me,—
And my heart may turn to stone.”
But I do not dread him now;
I have seen the slave's chain on his hand,
The captive's brand on his brow.
The living, loving Hand,
The Hand that holds his chain!
I shall feel it yet again,—
Feel it all fetters burst,—
Only that cold touch first!
Those terrible eyes obey;
I have seen them moist with tears,
For the weary, wandering, perplext;
But when I see them next,
They will smile all tears away.
Led up to the shadow it feared,
The mountain-height at His feet,
Where the earth and the heavens meet,
With His smile for the world's and my light;
Not the earth and the sea He upholds,
Not you, whom His love enfolds,
But far, far under me,
Like a shadow that flits o'er the sea,
Himself, the Last Enemy.
“TALITHA CUMI!”
The mother spoke;
And lightly from slumber
The child awoke.
At dawn of day,
As in dew a rosebud,
The maiden lay.
In calm repose;
Long lashes shading
The cheek's soft rose.
As though she smiled,
Awoke the child.
“Damsel, arise!”
And slowly opened
Those happy eyes.
At close of day,
Silent and pallid
The maiden lay.
On the cheek no rose;
Placid but rigid
The pale lips close.
Of even breath!
And the mother sobbeth,—
“Not sleep, but death!”
Her anguish now;
That placid brow.
The mourners make,
No tumult of minstrels
That sleep can break.
Of wild despair!
“Not dead, but sleeping!”
The Life is there.
Mother, as thine;
Yet Galilee's tempests
Know them Divine.
The mocking band;
Softly He toucheth
The clay-cold hand.
“Damsel arise!”
Those death-sealed eyes.
Tender and soft,
(Her mother had waked her
From sleep with it oft,)
Beyond the tombs,—
“Talitha Cumi!”
She hears and comes.
The gates of brass,
Which through the ages
None living pass,
Quake as with thunder,
Quiver like aspens,
And part asunder;
Touched by the sun;—
Passeth but one.
The soul of the child;
Saw Him who called her,
Knew Him and smiled.
The Saviour spoke;
And as from light slumbers,
The dead awoke.
“Talitha, in the dialect of the people, a term of endearment used towards a young maiden.” —Dean Alford on St. Mark's Gospel.
THE CHILD ON THE JUDGMENT-SEAT.
That thy brow is burdened and sad?
The Master's work may make weary feet,
But it leaves the spirit glad.
Or scorched by the mid-day glare?
Were thy vines laid low, or thy lilies crushed,
That thy face is so full of care?
I have sate on the judgment-seat,
Where the Master sits at eve and calls
The children around His feet.”
Sweet heart? Who set thee there?
'Tis a lonely and lofty seat for thee,
And well might fill thee with care.
I have sate there alone all day,
For it grieved me to see the children around
Idling their life away.
They wasted the precious hours;
They trained not the vines, nor gathered the fruits,
And they trampled the sweet, meek flowers.”
Sweet heart? What didst thou there?
Would the idlers heed thy childish voice?
Did the garden mend by thy care?
But they left me there forlorn;
My voice was weak, and they heeded not,
Or they laughed my words to scorn.”
The servants were not thine!
And the eyes which adjudge the praise and the blame
See further than thine or mine.
Will not raise its tones to be heard;
And none will resist its word.
The stores that should feed His poor,
And not lift my voice, be it weak as it may,
And not be grievëd sore?”
Wait till the evening falls;
The Master is near and knoweth all,
Wait till the Master calls.
Whilst thou sat'st on the judgment-seat;
Who watered thy roses and trained thy vines,
And kept them from careless feet?
That is saddest of all!
My vines are trailing, my roses parched,
My lilies droop and fall!”
Go back till the evening falls!
And bind thy lilies, and train thy vines,
Till for thee the Master calls.
Thou workest never alone,
Perchance he whose plot is next to thine
Will see it, and mend his own.
Till all grows fair and sweet;
And when the Master comes at eve,
Happy faces His coming will greet.
In the garden so fair to see,
In the Master's words of praise for all,
In a look of His own for thee!
“WHAT THOU WILT, O MY FATHER, AND WHEN.”
Now shaken like snow from the tree,
By the gusts of the boisterous winds
That had learned their rough play on the sea:
Queenly flowers! touch us gently, we pray;
For these light flakes ye scatter in jest
Do not gather again, like the spray.
Once broken, arise not again.”
But the winds frolicked wildly, and said,
“Never fear! we are bringing the rain.”
“Take heed where your revels ye keep;
Not the salt barren wastes of the deep.”
And said, “Children, never complain;
We are friends of your mother, the Earth,—
She has cried, and we bring her the rain.”
While the winds made rough riot about,
Whistling wildly where holes let them in,
Storming fiercely where walls kept them out:
Ye have frolicked and shouted all day;
Let me sleep, let me sleep in the night,—
Will ye never be tired of your play?”
“Dost thou too mistake and complain?
For thee we were sent o'er the sea,
For thee we are bringing the rain.”
And the sick child still murmured and wept,
Till a sultry calm fell on the land,
And the hushed winds all heavily slept.
And the shrivelled corn parched as it grew,
And the sick child with burning lips sighed,
Tossing sleepless the sultry night through.
God sent His kind winds o'er the sea;
He sent them to bring us the rain,
They came for the earth and for me.
And I murmured and moaned them away;
Come again! I would welcome you now,
Be your voices as rough as they may!”
“Fear not; He who sent, sends us still:
Your murmurs have marred your content,
But check not His merciful will.
To your moans He gave sorrowful heed;
Yet paused not one hour in His care,
To provide you the help that you need.
We come on his errands again;
We have brought, we have brought you the rain!”
And the rose-tree drank deep to the roots,
And the parched Earth looked up and was glad,
And laughed through her flowers and her fruits.
Like the showers of the life-giving rain
Sank deep in the heart of the child,
Till the incense of praise rose again.
Flowed the calm of the angels' “Amen,”
As with clasped hands she prayed ere she slept,
“What Thou wilt, O my Father, and When.”
THE STILL WATERS OF THE VALLEY.
The streams of which we drink;
But we must tread the valleys,
If we would reach their brink.
Their source is on the mountains,
Higher than feet can go;
Yet human lips but touch them
In the valleys, still and low.
Beyond the homes of men,
Beyond the wild-goat's refuge,
Beyond the eagle's ken,
Beyond the oldest glaciers,
Beyond the loftiest snows,
Beyond the furthest summit
Where earliest morning glows,
To reach the streams we love,
Their music ever with us,
Their source is still above,
Beyond Heaven's heights of glory,
As past earth's heights of snow;
Yet can our lips but taste them
In the valleys, still and low.
Seemed to call me on their track,
I wondered why some hindrance
Still drew my footsteps back;
Some feeble steps to succour,
Some childish feet to lead,
Some wandering lambs to gather,
Some hungered ones to feed;
With low, resistless tone;
Some weight of others' burdens,
Some burden of my own.
But now, though heavenly voices
Still bid my spirit soar,
While my feet tread lowly places,
I wonder thus no more.
The streams of which we drink;
But only in the valleys
Our lips can reach their brink.
Our hearts are on the mountains
Whither our feet shall go;
But our feet are in the valleys
Where the still waters flow.
TRIED BY FIRE.
And what are the fires that try?—
All, all is tried in the fires of God,
And many the fires that try.
All but the fine, fine gold;
The treasures we offer for praise and pride
Or for pride and self withhold;
And we, as far as our souls are wrapt
In the raiment that waxeth old.
They are burning every day;
They are trying us all, within and without,
The gold and the potter's clay.
Nothing that is not dross;
Or wood of the true, true Cross;
Of faith and hope and love,
The precious things that abide earth's fires,
And for ever abide, above.
That is not waste or dross—
That we would not choose, could we see, to lose,
And say, this was gain not loss.
ON THE GRAVE OF A FAITHFUL DOG.
A sunny slope of meadow ground,
A shadow from the heat at noon,—
And, underneath, a grassy mound.
And is this all is left of thee,
Whose feet would o'er the meadow bound,
So full of eager life and glee?
Of what so wholly passed away?
Or can such trust and tenderness
Be crushed entirely into clay?
Feet pattering like summer showers,
The dark eyes which would look so sad
If gathering tears were dimming ours;
So fond and watchful, deep and true,
That made the thought so often rise—
What looks those crystal windows through?
And for the absent seem to pine?
And when the well-known voice came back,
What ecstasy could equal thine?
Such gladness, love, and hope, and trust,
Such busy thought our thought to guess,
All trampled into common dust?
Has all for ever passed away,
Like the dear home once thine and mine,
The home now silent as thy clay?
From all our science still concealed,
About the patient creatures dumb
A secret yet to be revealed?
Yet for the mute creation stored,
Which suffers though it never sinned,
And loves and hopes without reward?
TO OUR LITTLE DOG DOT.
So gently laid asleep;
The traces of thy life in ours
How many and how deep!
Welcome, reproof, command,
The small foot knocking at the door
Laid gently in the hand.
The planning, eager will,
The following steps—without them all
“Dot's house” seems very still.
Seem in thy grave to lie,
We will not let them die!
Our little steadfast friend,
Thy life leaves legacies of love
On to its quiet end.
With different love for each,
Unchanged through absences of years;—
Death wakes thy life to speech!
“For love alone is strong;
You made my little life so bright,
Your longest is not long.”
Can nothing lie before?
Or has the future only this,
“Never again,” “no more?”
The answer comes to me,
With the sweet wisdom of the babes—
Dear little child of three!
“Then she will learn to speak.”
Bright vision of the children's heart,—
Further we need not seek!
And love alone is strong;
And love lives in eternal worlds
Beyond earth's poor “How long?”
And love means “thee” and “me,”—
God, who is love, will never let
Love cease to love, or be.
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI'S CANTICUM SOLIS.
Altissimo omnipotente buon Signore, tue son le laudi, la gloria, lo honor e ogni benediction. A te solo se confanno e nullo homo è degno di nominarti.
Laudato sia mio Signore per tutte le creature, specialmente Messer lo Fratre Sole, il quale giorna illumina noi per lui. E alto e bello e radiante con grande splendore. Da Te Signore porta significazione.
Laudato sia mio Signore per Suora Luna e per le stelle le quali in cielo le hai formate chiare e belle.
Laudato sia mio Signore per fratre Vento e per la luce e nuvole e sereno e ogni tempo, per lo quale dai a tutte creature sustentamento.
Laudato sia mio Signore per Suora acqua la quale è molto utile e humile e pretiosa e casta.
Laudato sia mio Signore per Fratre Fuoco per lo quale tu allumini la notte, è bello e jocundo e robustissimo e forte.
Laudato sia mio Signore per nostra Madre Terra la quale ne sostenta, governa, e produce diversi frutte, e coloriti fiori e herbi.
Laudato sia mio Signore per quelli che perdonano per lo tuo amore e sosteneno infirmitade e tribulatione. Beati quelli che sostegneranno in pace che da Te Altissimo saranno incoronati.
A brotherhood of blessed creatures goes
With me, and biddeth me God speed. For all
Thy mute and innocent creatures take my thanks;
Or sin.
He who brings day and summer, disenchants
The ice-bound streams, and wakes the happy birds,
Pure choristers, to matins; at whose call
The young flowers, startled from their hiding-places,
Peep and laugh; who clothes the earth, and fills
The heavens with joy; and he is beautiful
And radiant with great splendour. Praise to Thee,
O Highest! for our royal Brother Sun;
For bears he not an impress, Lord, of Thee?
All praise for her our holy white-veiled sister,
Dwelling on high in heavenly purity;
And for the radiant hosts that bear her company,
For they are bright and beautiful.
Praise for the Moon and Stars.
For light and clouds, for weather fair or dark;
Through all Thou nourishest Thy creatures all.
Praise for our brother Wind; for though his voice
Is rough at times, and in his savage mood
Yet at Thy calm rebuke he layeth by
His lion nature, frisketh like a lamb
Beside the streams, and gently crisps with snow
The sapphire waves, and stirs the corn, and wakes
The languid flowers to life, and lays dead blossoms
Softly in their graves: for the strong winds,
The rough but kindly winds, we bless Thee, Lord,
Our lowly sister, Water, mountain child
Whose happy feet make music on the hills;
For her who bounds so light from rock to rock,
Yet brings a blessing wheresoe'er she comes.
She spurns all fetters, laughs at all restraint,
Yet scorns no lowliest ministry of love,
Abiding peacefully in roadside wells,
And sparkling welcomes in the peasant's cup.
Nature's sweet almoner! all praise for her!
For she is useful, precious, meek, and chaste.
We bless Thee, Lord, for her.
When he goes forth exulting in his strength,
And all things quail and fly before his face!
Yet he will sit a patient minister
He cheers us. He is joyous, bold, robust,
And strong. Praise, Lord, for him!
Our faithful mother Earth, who feedeth us
With such unwearied love, and strews our paths
With rainbow-tinted flowers and healing herbs;
Our gentle, generous, most beautiful,
And ever youthful mother.
The blessed, who for Thy dear love forgive,
And for Thy love sustain weakness and woe.
Blessed are they who thus endure in peace;
For they by Thee, O Highest, shall be crowned.
Thus, blessed Christ, all praise to Thee for these
Thy creatures. They are all Thy ministers,
And to Thy reconciled speak nought but peace.
Children and servants are we in our household,
Dwelling before Thee in sweet harmony.
O bless us all! Father! we all bless Thee!
In Memoriam et Spem Aeternam.
HOW DOTH DEATH SPEAK OF OUR BELOVED?
Too gently to be called delight,
In the dark valley reäppears
As a wild cataract of tears;
And love in life should strive to see
Sometimes what love in death would be.”
Coventry Patmore's Angel in the House.
When it has laid them low,
When it has set its hallowing touch
On speechless lip and brow?
With radiance from the holiest place,
With light as from an angel's face;
And tracing to their hidden source
Deeds scarcely noticed in their course,—
That daily act of sacrifice,
Of which too late we learn the price;
Simple unnoticed kindnesses,
Forgotten tones of tenderness,
Sacred as hymns in infancy
Learnt listening at a mother's knee.
When it has laid them low.
Then let love antedate the work of death
And speak thus now.
When it has laid them low,
When it has set its hallowing touch
On speechless lip and brow?
As sweeps the sea the trampled sand,
Till scarce the faintest print is scanned.
Was but a generous nature's weed,
Or some choice virtue run to seed;
Was but love's over-anxiousness,
Which had not been had love been less;
But the dim shade of day declined,
Which should have made us doubly kind.
When it has laid them low,
When it has set its hallowing touch
On speechless lip and brow.
When it has laid them low,
When it has set its hallowing touch
On speechless lip and brow?
And brands it in upon the heart
With caustic power and cruel art.
A giant stature will have gained
When it can never be explained;
How tenderly we watched and loved,
And those mute lips to smiles had moved;
Which might have cheered some cheerless hour
When they with earth's poor needs were poor.
It sweeps their failings out of sight;
It clothes their good in heavenly light.
And do this now;
Thou who art love thus hallow our beloved,
Not death but Thou!
SWEET IS THE LIGHT!
I.
“Sweet is the light!” they sang,First Singers of our race,—
On each familiar thing,
On each beloved face!
The mighty, conquering light,
Arrowy, keen, and strong!
The dear, familiar light,
Waking the world to song!
Light on the purple seas—
Light in the golden sky;
“Sweet is the light!” they sang;
“And therefore dire to die!”
II.
To die! and leave the light,Shadows among the glooms;
Groping 'mid ghosts of joys
For dawn that never comes;
Far from all homely things,
And all familiar ways;
Whilst o'er us, morn by morn,
Still shine the old glad rays,
Waking the fresh green earth
With songs to greet the sky:
“Sweet is the light!” they sang;
“And therefore dire to die!”
III.
Sweet is the light—all light—O Fount of light! we sing,—
On each beloved face,
On each familiar thing!
Thy mighty, probing light,
Keen to part right from wrong!
Thy dear, familiar light,
Waking Thy worlds to song!
Light in Thy sapphire sky;
“Sweet is the light!” we sing;
And therefore sweet to die!
IV.
To die! and find the light,And never lose it more;
Light on Life's troubled waves,
Where much was dark before,—
The little stormy course
Which tossed us to Thy shore;
Light on the ceaseless storms
Wherein our race is whirled,—
The blindness, battles, sins,
And chaos of the world;
Light on Thy countless worlds,
The order through the strife;—
The Life that moves the Law,
The Love that moves the Life.
Thy mighty conquering light,
Life-giving, keen, and strong!
Thy kind, familiar light,
Proved step by step so long!
Holy and homelike glow,—
The Home where, one by one,
Our best and dearest go.
Sweet is the light! we sing;
O Light, in Whom we see!
No darkness waiteth us,—
No darkness is in Thee.
Sweet is the light, we sing,
Where Thou art known, on high!
Not darkly—Face to face:
Sweet, therefore, sweet to die!
SERREZ LES RANGS!
Roll round us, above us, and under,
In our ranks those dread chasms were torn
As the hailstorm sweeps paths in the corn,
When those terrible gaps first we felt,
Felt like snow-flakes our men from us melt,
Like a ghostly cry, piercing and clear
Rang the word of command on the ear,
“Close the ranks.”
Not knowing whose places we filled,
Obedient, together we pressed,
In serried ranks charging abreast,
Still shoulder to shoulder were ranged,
Though the comrades be mournfully changed;—
Closed the ranks.
For no pity the battle delayed,
On we pressed, in close ranks o'er our dead,
Left our wounded where, fallen, they bled;
For the day's work had yet to be wrought,
For our dead and our wounded we fought,
For their sakes not a pause might we dare,
For their sakes lying helplessly there,
For their sakes on we pressed on our way,
Closed the ranks, sped the charge, won the day.
In the thick of the old ceaseless strife,
When those terrible gaps come again,
On the heart fall the blank and the pain,
And we know, in our anguish, too well
What we lost when thus stricken they fell,
Still that Word of Command on the ear
Through the blank and death-silence rings clear,
“Close the ranks!”
Press on where they fell, side by side;
For their sakes of whose stay we're bereft,
Press closer to those who are left,
In unbroken lines faithfully pressed,
Not a moment the charge must be stayed,
For no tears be the battle delayed;
For their sakes not the feeblest despairs,
The fight and its triumphs are theirs;—
Press forward where they led the way,
Close the ranks, speed the charge, win the day.
HOME BECAUSE NOT HOME.
'Tis but a ship at sea;
I look across the waves and foam,
I press across to Thee.
As on the prow I stand,
Trusting Thy glorious Face to see
In the beloved land;
Where our beloved are,
Where, ever, near to Thee they stand
And watch us, not from far.
Speeds through the skies apace,
Measuring the ceaseless flow of time
By her swift whirl through space.
Abide not still one day;
I need not, then, call home the place
Wherein we cannot stay!
Uncabled, launched, and free,
And cleaving through the seas our way
To our beloved and Thee.
I need not call it home;
'Tis but Thy guest-house, night and day,
Where pilgrims go and come;
Welcomed and sped by Thee:
I need not build a home below;
Thy guest-house let it be!
And therefore 'tis no care;
Yet I must do my best with Thine
To make it bright and fair;
For Thee and Thine alway;
To speed them on Thy way:
Steered to Thy shore by Thee;
Thy guest-house which for Thee I keep,
And therefore home to me.
IN MEMORIAM ET SPEM ÆTERNAM.
In richest store;
But my fond hands were weak, belov'd, to crown thee,
My treasures poor!
Now God has given thee His best things, belovëd,
And they are more.
Service the loftiest this earth can render
Thou shouldst have won,
Such honour, here, as all who knew felt due thee,
Who claimedst none!
God gives thee service now to which earth's highest
Were low and poor,
Crowns with the crown of His “Well done,” for ever;
And that is more.
God called thee home;
He bid thee come.—
The path thou lovedst closed to thee in boyhood,
Yet lov'd life-long.
Bravely thou tookest up the yoke laid on thee,
Patient and strong;
Content and earnest as in paths self-chosen
Pursu'dst thy way,
Toiledst thy thirty patient years for others,
From day to day,
And when thy reaping-time at last seemed coming
Wert called away.
From all the bright, ripe fields before thee widening
God called thee hence;—
He would not give one portion of thy guerdon
In earth's poor pence;
Thy hands are full, belovëd, now of God's own riches
Fadeless and fair;
Thou passedst Time in Time's best work of sowing,
And reapest there!
Lest I repine?
Nor fear to mar with fond words of complaining
The peace of thine?
With praise of mine?
Unconscious of the beauty of thy living
Thou passedst on,
Shining unconscious as God's best and truest
Ever have shone.
Thou reapedst in the light thy life shed round thee,
The trust it won.
(Thank God, we saw it as we walked beside thee,
Not first, too late,
In all the anguish of this blank and darkness
Left desolate!)
Thou reapedst in the deep peace of thy dying,
All conflicts o'er,
Thy last step into heaven but one of thousands
Which went before,
Abundant entrance, opening for one moment
On us heaven's door!
Thou reapedst in the heritage thou leavest,
Prayers of the poor,—
The Master's likeness on our hearts engraven
For evermore.
In earth's poor store;
And they are more.
A heart made glad with God's own wealth of gladness,
Calm to the core;
A heart made full as human love could fill it,
And peace Divine;
That on this earth which was to thee the dearest,
Entirely thine;—
Nay, e'en on earth in earth's best things thou reapedst,
Earth's richest store!
Thou reapest now in God's best things, belovëd,—
And they are more.
REFLECTED LIGHT.
The pain, the death are all for me!
'Tis fond delusion makes them thine,
Transferring my regrets to thee.
That thou, reluctant, hurried hence,
On all the good we hoped to do
Look'st back with wistful longings thence;
On holy hopes all unfulfilled!
The shattered hopes are mine alone,
Thine in the well of life are stilled;
Fulfilled, and freed for wider range,
From height to height of fuller light,
From stage to stage of growth and change.
Mine only! Thine no more! no more!
Fulfilment, joy, expansion, thine!
Winged by thy joy my soul can soar;
Silently fills and floods my heart,
As with long gaze, enrapt, intent,
I see thee blessed as thou art.
My weakness in thy strength grows strong,—
I know thy very heavens were sad
If thou couldst think I suffered wrong.
And lonely, thus bereft of thee,
Love makes thy joy amidst my dearth
A banquet of delight to me,—
To drink of selfish pleasure's cup,
But laid'st thine ease and comfort down
To take thy brother's burden up,—
Fulfilled, not lost in God's great will;
In heaven is sacred to thee still.
And therefore, (or thou wert not blest!)
Thou know'st this anguish deep and sore
Works e'en for me God's very best.
Belov'd, who seest the Face of God,
His smile, reflected, shines on me,
Draws me to His and thine abode.
NOT DRIFTING; PILOTED.
Serene and open, bright and free.
Heaven and home where'er we are.
All home where we together range.
Only one huge wave's tidal sweep;
O'er-arching in its deadly cave.
Swept underneath that rush of dark!
Still sweeping, on, that steady Tide!
All tracks alike; no port, no shore.
All shores, all seas, alike; all strange.
A Face! a Face! regarding me.
Commanding Hand! Most pitying smile!
By wisest tracks that ocean o'er.
Lit by that smile, a shore! the Shore!
And oh! what faces waiting me.
THE BEAUTIFUL GATE OF THE TEMPLE.
Gate of the home by the way!
Hour for which daily to wait,
Hour at the close of the day!
Arm never trusted in vain,
Hearts in each other at rest,
Home all home again!
Gate at the end of the way;—
Men call it a Gate of Brass,
A prison-gate, they say.
Pitiless, heavy, and strong;
But we who have looked inside
Know they have named it wrong:
Its bars all shattered and slight,
Mere bars of shadow that streak
And prove the inner light;
Gate where all bonds shall break,
All severed hearts unite.
Gate of the Temple of God!
Well through the day we may wait
Till it open for us our abode.
Hearts past all parting and pain,
In God and each other at rest,
Home all home again!
Gate at the end of the way!
Well worth day's toil and strife
For that hour at the end of the day.
SPRINGING INTO LIFE.
Ach! wollt' Gott ich hätt' auch den Sprung gethan!
Ich wollt' mich nicht sehr hernieder sehnen.”
Dr. Martin Luther.
As a wave whose force is spent,
As a weary child on its mother's breast,—
So it seemed, but not thus they went.
Who watch by our side alway,
And through the calm of the last repose
See the dawn of the endless day.
Strong and free to life they sprang;
As the warrior sprang to the strife
When the clarion's summons rang;
By the touch of spring set free,
Vocal and strong bounds forth again,
Springs forth to meet the sea;
Caged in the darkness long,
Freed by the touch of a friendly hand
Springs into light and song.
They sprang to life and song!—
As a waking child to its mother's breast,
Refreshed and glad and strong
AT EVENTIDE IT SHALL BE LIGHT.
Through fog and din thy path would be;
While I at home upon the height
Would work, and rest, and wait for thee.
Through dust and din my path must be,
Whilst thou above all mists and strife
Waitest at Home, on high, for me.
No murmur ever left thy lips;
I will not sigh o'er “dreary days,”
Though darkened by thy light's eclipse.
The Presence in which thou art blest;
The Face, the Sun of worlds, is there,—
Yet bright to us the glistening vest.
But yet, I think, an hour shall be
At evening on the homelike height
Which will be morn to thee and me.
THE TOMB AND THE TEMPLE.
With the sleep of one turned to stone,—
With my changeless burden of sorrow,
Alone, for ever alone;
On the grave no larger than others,
For other eyes to see,
Which has made all earth and heaven
One vaulted grave to me.
On the stone of that sacred tomb
Which needs no seal to seal it
Close till the Day of Doom,—
On the stone no friendly angel,
No earthquake shall roll away,
Till the friendly hands shall move it
For me, on my resting-day.
And nevermore alone!
Awake, in a vast Cathedral,
But not one built of stone.
Deep are its strong foundations;—
They have pierced through the bars of death
By the force of a Life Immortal
Inspired by a dying breath.
Its span is too high and broad;
None know how high it towereth,
For within is the Throne of God.
Each stone and each note of its music
Are the spoils of a mortal strife;
Its every song is a Triumph,
Its every stone a life.
Though it seem to men but a moan;
For it presseth through anguish victorious
To God, to God alone;—
Till low at His feet it sobbeth,
“Father! Thy will be done!”
And He asketh no higher music
From the angels around His Throne.
Are from more than a single Choir;
And though diverse the tones of its music,
They are fused in one inward fire.
The singers are all immortal,
One life inspires them through;
But some have their dying over,
And some have it yet to do.
Are broken and weak and few,
To the glorious hosts above us,
Just hidden from our view.
For daily our best rise thither;
Soon He will call us too,
Even us, when He sees we are ready,
To Himself, belov'd, and to you!
Till our work is done below,—
Till the lessons are learnt more truly
We are careless to learn, and slow,—
Till the likeness is formed that only
Through frosts and fires can grow;
Soon, not too late by a moment,
For He knows how we long to go.
We may serve there, night and day,
Its life and its music around us
In all our work and way.
For grand as it is and holy,
Eternal and Divine,
It is simple, homelike, human,
As a home of thine and mine.
It haunts us where'er we roam;
For the Father's House is the Temple,
And the Temple the children's Home.
THE CRYPT.
Moaning, moaning ceaselessly,
“Earth is all one grave to me,
Sweetest fields but churchyard turf,
Sunniest seas but deadly surf,
Fairest skies one vaulted tomb,
Death in all homes most at home.”
Back from far they come to me,
Echoed from the Crystal Sea
In a chant of victory;
From that Sea's translucent verge
Back in triumphs peals the dirge:
What besides can earth now be,
Since He died on earth for thee,
Since beneath it He lay, dim,
Cold and still each tortured limb.
Buried are His own with Him,
Yet the dirge is all a hymn.
And its dim sepulchral lamps
For His Temple spaces high,
For His depths of starry sky?
Wouldest thou? Not so would they
Who one moment breathe His day!
Earth has light for earth's great strife,—
Where He liveth, there is life!
Yet lift up thine eyes and see!
For the stone is rolled away
And He standeth there to-day,
Patiently by thee will stay
Till thy heart ‘Rabboni’ say!
He will not desert the clay,
Thine, nor theirs, by night nor day.
Sobbed through agony of tears,
Those far-off Amens to hear;
That alone can tune thy heart
In those songs to take its part.
‘Earth is all one grave to me,’
Echoed, shall come back to thee
In a chant of victory,
Echoed from the Crystal Sea
From the living victors free,
Ransomed everlastingly.”
RESURRECTION.
Standing by the Crystal Sea
Sing the song of victory!
Buried are Thine own with Thee,
Risen are Thine own with Thee!
We may chant it, even we!
One our service, one our love;
Not at death that life begins,
Though a fuller strength it wins,
Freed from all that bounds its flight,
Freed from all that cramps its might.
Dim with fears and fitful hopes,
They upon the eternal heights
Glorious in undying lights,
Yet their life and ours is one,
E'en on us their Sun hath shone,
E'en for us their Day begun.
Are the same where they were led;
Very sacred grown and sweet,
Trodden by immortal feet,—
Trodden once, oh best of all!
By the Feet at which they fall.
Which to any here we do,
Linked in one immortal chain
Makes their service live again,—
Brings us to the service nigh
Which they render now, on high;
For the highest heavens above
Nothing higher know than love.
IN MEMORY OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.
His life grew up among us, and cast its shade abroad;
As the Temple on the Hill of God, profaned by no rude stroke.
Till scarcely thinking whence it comes, we feel it everywhere;
And as we say, “How beautiful!” he sets and day is done.
The lowly path of duty on the lonely heights he trod,—
With a poet's sense of beauty in hue and form and sound:
But royally for others spent strength and time and thought;
Inspiring other men to do, and training them to see;
Making poor men's homes more homelike, and all men's homes more fair;
Ennobling toil for working men, ennobling life for all;
Till few among the mighty have left a fame so true:
That the humblest man among us by it might mould his own;
For once, with all its myriad aims, one heart, one soul, one mind;
Wept silently in countless homes, as each had lost a friend.
From the echoes and the shadows of these dim shores of Time;
To the Light which casts the shadows, the Light in Whom is life;
To Him who sits there evermore, “the Lamb that has been slain;”
To dwell with Him for ever and be made perfect there!
Can we doubt, when God thus called him, that willingly he went?
And for that woe made matchless by years of joy so great!
But now what can thy nation do, our Queen! for thee, but weep!
Love which can soothe its bitterness, Duty its void to fill.
The weeping children wandering here, and those at home above;
Has sunk into the slow dull pain, the blank that cannot change,
“Life is no empty barren waste, and grief is not in vain.”
Could tears but tell thee what thou art to us, and still shalt be;
To honour in her highest place, for a chair of state,—a home!
Which flow for thee from eyes long dried by the dull weight of cares;
Deepened to tenderest reverence, now soars to heaven in prayers,—
Filled with such service for thy land, even to thee seem brief?
THE QUEEN'S WREATH ON THE PRESIDENT'S BIER.
Wife of a hero, watching by thy dead;
On through a nation round thee, silent, weeping!
—Thou weepest not until thy task be sped.
To honour and to mourn their dead and thine,
With bared heads kneeling, hushed in awe and pity
For crime inhuman met with grace divine;
One bier, and on it laid one Funeral Wreath,
Borne from the mother land beyond the Ocean;—
The hand of Love above the hand of Death.
Goodness and truth,—the eternal and unseen;—
Through the true heart of one true widowed Queen.
Thy crown of sorrow hallows thee to this!
And thou, new mourner! fear not to be lonely,
Since of such woe is born earth's saving bliss.
One triumph more through paths in anguish trod;
Two nations through two women's hearts embracing,
One People bowing low before one God!
Alluding to President Garfield's speech on adjourning Congress after President Lincoln's assassination.
IN MEMORY OF THE LADY AUGUSTA STANLEY.
Heart wide as life, deep as life's deepest woe!
His servants serve Him day and night above,—
Thou servedst day and night we thought, below.
Hands tender to bind up hearts wounded sore;
Stooping quite down earth's lowest needs beside,
“Master, like Thee!” we thought, and said no more.
Hands stretched in helplessness to serve no more,—
Dulled by no slumber to their deepest pain,—
“Master, like Thee!” we wept, and said no more.
Crowned with life's choicest blossoms night and morn;
God made thee drink of His Beloved's cup,
And crowned thee with the Master's crown of thorn.
We learned a little more His face to see;
Then looking from the cross for us He bore
To thine, we almost understood for thee.
Strong and unwearied, serving day and night;
Oh blessed life of service and of love!
Master, like Thee, and with Thee, in Thy light!
IN MEMORY OF ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.
Five long years since, for thee, that passed away,
When she was borne from thee, thy joy and stay;
The children she so loved in either hand,
Thy home “unroofed,” a stranger in thy land.
Still to fulfil, alone, the double life,
Alone to bear the burden and the strife,—
Food to the hungered from thy dearth impart,
Dying, still blessing, from thine own to part.
Fought the last fight, the victory fully won;
Thou'rt gone from this small world beneath the sun.
The Master loved so long, trusted and tried;
Gone where the blest who enter in abide;
Where mercy with the Merciful shall be,
The pure in heart the face of God shall see.
Adoring now for ever by her side,
Serene thou dwellest and art satisfied.
Alluding to the Dean's pronouncing the Benediction himself at his wife's funeral, and after receiving the Sacrament for the last time.
THE SCHOOL AND THE HOME.
And murmur, O mysterious ways of God!
When the fine gold whence beams His image plain
Is stored within His innermost abode?
Lavished its skill some choice work to prepare,
And then unfinished, cast it on the strand,
To perish incomplete and broken there.
The master-touch that all the rest inspires,
And the rich colours and the gold of heaven,—
Enamelled in the last of many fires,—
A vessel meet the Master's House to grace,
A portrait beaming back the Master's Face;—
Where earthly damps the burnished gold might dim,
Where careless hands the gracious form might break—
Take to the Father's House, within, with Him?
Has done such work as schools and lessons can,—
When through the discipline of tasks and rules
The boy compacts,—expands,—into the man,—
Where manhood's earnest standards are unfurled?
Is not the school an exile from the home?
Is not the school the threshold of a world?
Its light upon the Sovereign's brow to yield?
Who would not wonder if the ripened corn
Were left to wither on the harvest-field?
Where golden sheaves waved musical and fair,
The blank and silence of the falling year.
Whose working near us made us work our best,
Whose generous smile still drew our aims on high,
Whose ripe achievement shamed self-soothing rest.
Here are so many tangling coils to loose,
So many hearts that need the tenderest touch,
So few hands trained like his to finest use!
“And subtlest touches, shaped this instrument
For choicest work, only to rest on high?”
But swift the answer smites our discontent:
Earth's highest work but such as children do;
The workmen here their priceless skill are gaining,
The true life-work is yonder, out of view.”
And thank Thee for the liberating blow
To little rounded dreams of life below,—
Is but outside, the Porch of the Abode;
And death the going home, the entering in,
The stepping forth on the wide world of God.
THE SHADOW OF DEATH AND “THE SHADOW OF DYING.”
Thy words still breathe forth living breath;
To thee but “the shadow of dying,”
On us rests “the shadow of death.”
The glory on thee through hath shined;
Thou hast passed from its shadow, immortal,
And left all the shadows behind.
The shadow is all we can see;
Earth with heavier darkness investing,
By all the sweet light lost with thee;—
To welcome all light from all sides;
With the heart which by force of its loving
Swept all ice-blocks away in its tides;
Like a glory around thee which shone,
Who couldst stoop to give love to the meanest,
But stoop to seek honour from none;
And the glad, simple trust of the child;—
Spirit radiant as e'er through the ages
Loved to drink of the well undefiled!
Thou countedst it ours to be left;
Still earth's sleep with the Glad News to waken,
Nor quite of thy presence bereft.
(No narrower Home e'er was thine),
One Lord ever human, divine;
Embreathed by one Spirit's life-breath;
In the light of Him living whose dying
Has made but a shadow of death.
TO ONE AT REST.
How changed art thou since last we met to keep the day of rest!
Young with the youth of angels, wise with the growth of years;
For we have passed since thou hast gone a week of many tears,
And thou hast passed a week with Christ, a week without a sin,
Thy robes made white in Jesus' blood, all glorious within.
Not a sorrow or a joy, but we shall long to call thee back;
For many dear and true are left, but none are quite like thee!
And evermore to all our life a deeper tone is given,
For a playmate of our childhood has entered into heaven.
Loving as thou art loved by God, knowing as thou art known!
Yet in that world thou carest yet for those thou lov'dst in this;
The rich man did in torments, and wilt not thou in bliss?
For sitting at the Saviour's feet, and gazing in His face,
Surely thou'lt not unlearn one gentle human grace.
Human and not angelic the form He deigns to wear;
Of Jesus, not of angels the likeness thou shalt bear.
From the tumultuous hopes of earth, and from its aching fear;
High is thy sphere above us now, and yet in this the same,
Together do we watch and wait for that long-promised day,
When the Voice that rends the tombs shall call, “Arise and come away,
My Bride and my Redeemed; winter and night are past,
And the time of singing and of light has come to thee at last;”
When the Family is gathered and the Father's House complete,
And we and thou, beloved, in our Father's smile shall meet.
IT IS NO DREAM.
That life whose dawn with such deep joy we hailed,—
Those loving baby arms so fondly clinging,
Those eyes whose smiles so soon in death were veiled?
Such silence as that little life has left,—
The blank no other presence e'er replaces;—
It is no dream which leaves us thus bereft.
That little star through endless time shall beam;
Heaven shall be brighter for thy light for ever,
And gladder for thy voice. It is no dream!
Man may repent his gifts; God deals not thus:
And He who gave will give thee back to us.
Where He who blessed the babes has welcomed thee;
Fearless the infants pass its solemn portal,
Borne in His arms, His face alone they see.
Didst yield to death Thy Son, Thine only Son,
Thou knowest all the cost of such surrender;
Help us to say with Him, Thy will be done!
On all the way through which our feet were brought,
We sing, “It was no dream by which God tried us,—
No dream the weight of glory it has wrought!”
A TRUE DREAM.
With hearts and footsteps light and free,
That one so dearly loved and I,
As in the childish days gone by
For ever.
I heard her soft laugh as of old;
Her eyes with smiles were brimming o'er—
Eyes we may meet on earth no more
For ever.
A sense perplexed of loss and change—
An echo dim of time and tears,
Until I said, “How long it seems
Since thus we danced! Is it not strange?
Do you not feel the weight of years?
Or mourn to think we must grow old?”
Wondering, she paused a little while,
Then answered, with a radiant smile,
“No! never!”
The customs of some foreign land;
Or spoke a tongue she knew of old,
But could no longer understand,
Till o'er her face that sunshine broke,
And with that radiant smile she spoke
That “Never!”
I knew the sense of what she said;
Young with immortal truth and love,
Child in the Father's House above
For ever.
They smite us with no grief or pain;
We journey not towards the night,
But to the breaking of the light,
Together
The lavish years are draining low;
But living streams that, welling o'er,
Fresh from the living Fountain flow
For ever.
“ALL LIVE UNTO HIM.”
And have left a silence in my home no music e'er can fill:
And thy words are words of praise, and thy tones are tones of joy.
And half the light is gone with them from all the sights I see;
And they shine like happy stars in the heaven of the Blest.
It has but passed into the light, the light beyond the clouds.
Thousands of happy spirits love and rejoice with thee;
Has laid thee in His arms, darling, and clasped thee to His breast.
Hymns.
THE PROMISE OF THE PRESENCE.
With thousand promises have rung:
They sparkled o'er the dewy ways
When Earth, and Time, and Man were young.
One light-point gathers all the rays:
To us He speaketh through the Son,
“Lo! I am with you all the days.”
Homes full of life, and life of bliss,
Long life with silver crowns of age,—
To us is promised none of this.
Their thousand were but stars at night,
Is Day itself, is life and light.
Some must be dark with storm and haze,
To each its measured load will cling;
But “I am with you all the days.”
They led Thee through no easy ways,
And our true path is following Thee;
But “Thou art with us all the days.”
Still deeper hopes to us belong;
We may be blind, but Thou canst see;
We may be weak, but Thou art strong!
No day shall come and not bring Thee;
No night shall come and find Thee gone,—
Thou Who hast taught in Galilee;—
And prayed upon the lone hillside:
And on the cross for us hast died;
Thou Who hast lived it, even Thou!
Not only the great Memory;
The living Presence, here and now!
Or principles, though all Divine;
The Master Hand, the living Voice;
Thyself: not only what is Thine!
With us, our Strength, from youth to age;
Oh, Just and True! oh, Love and Might!
Our Sovereign and our Heritage!
The fulness of the living Source!
No lighted lamp, no mirror moon;—
The Sun, the Fount of life and force!
Fresh work, with ever-freshened zest;
At evening, to restore and rest.
Making it well worth while to live
With daily tasks fresh from Thy hand;—
With us our Saviour, to forgive!
To guide, restrain, correct, inspire;
Moulding our wills, Thy willing clay,
Kindling our hearts, Thy kindred fire.
To types and seeds of higher things:
Dark days of loss; Thy touch but frees
The shattered seed to spread its wings.
Openest to our beloved Thy door;—
They enter to Thy joy with Thee;
And we are left, bereft and poor,
A living touch our spirit stays:
For “Thou art with us all the days.”
With “Fear not; I am still with thee;”
And ends, beyond the clouds and sins,
With “Evermore His Face they see.”
Each step of the untrodden way;
With us all day, and all the days,
Till days and nights dawn to Thy Day!
VEILED ANGELS.
Have come to us, our God, from Thee.
Aglow with heaven's own living light.
And spoke in voices grave and low.
We met you first, and many tears.
We know ye come to teach and bless.
We trace you to our Father's Home.
Your faces are, those veils behind.
In earth, or heaven shall drop away;
And learn why thus ye sped from far.
We know not yet; we wait to see.
The way ye came, our souls shall go;
Back to our Father's blessed Home.
Lord! when the veil is rent from Thine!
THE CRUSE THAT FAILETH NOT.
And through all the years of famine, thou shalt still have drops to spare.
Scanty fare for one will often make a royal feast for two!
Seeds which mildew in the garner, scattered, fill with gold the plain.
Help to bear thy brother's burden; God will bear both it and thee.
Chafe that frozen form beside thee, and, together, both shall glow.
Lavish on their wounds thy balsams, and that balm shall heal thine own.
Nothing but a ceaseless fountain can its ceaseless longings still.
It can only live in loving, and by serving love will grow.
GETHSEMANE.
“The Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.”
And narrowing its current evermore;
Therefore, O Saviour, loving, pitying, trusting,
Thy heart no ice of sin had crusted o'er,
Than any heart that ever broke or bled;
The timid love that followed yet denied Thee,
The selfish fear that kept far off, or fled.
Enfeebling to endure, or act, or dare;
Till nothing save the balm of heavenly pardons
Can nerve the heart again to do or bear.
Than any sinful heart that ever beat;
Yet hast Thou tenfold strength its woes to meet.
Thus tasking all Thy patience and Thy trust?
What woe beyond all woe Thy spirit crushes,
Bowing Thee, sinless, spotless, to the dust?
Singing glad psalms still with their dying breath;
Not all their tortures causing once to languish
The hope that led them forth for Thee to death.
Uplifted, 'midst the stones, towards Thy skies,
Beaming from radiant brows Thine own evangels,
And glowing with the welcome in Thine eyes.
But bowest prostrate on the dewy sod,
Thy soul exceeding sorrowful, death-riven,
Thy sweat of anguish as great drops of blood.
Whose arm has borne so many through the flood?
Strength of all martyrs, patient Lamb of God?
Hadst made so fair; so fallen, loved and sought:
The sin of all Thine own to whom Thou camest;
Thou camest and Thine own received Thee not.
Who from the sting of death hadst set them free;
The sin of all Thy martyrs who confessed Thee,
And died rejoicing that they went to Thee.
Which Thee, O Highest, thus so low hath laid!
The curse of all the law mankind had broken,
The sin of all the world which Thou hadst made.
Thou buriest all within Thy single breast;
And changest thus our every curse to blessing,
Giving us life through death,—in labour Rest.
LAST TOUCHES, LAST STEPS, LAST WORDS.
Yet by no nails held fast;
Only by force of dear, Divine commands,
And love, on to the last!
By love and pain held fast!
Ere to this torture yielded up so long,
What was it they did last?
Gave it to drink to all,
And with the wine of God they filled it up—
Drops from Thy heart that fall.
But common bread before;
Which faileth never more.
(Master in ministry!)
Washed off the common dust of path and street
From feet which followed Thee!
(One touch, as in the past,)
Healing the foe, though friends had struck the blow;
'Twas this those hands did last.
No more for us Earth's round!
What were the latest willing steps they sped
Ere piercëd thus, and bound?
In dark Gethsemane;
Thou badest Thy beloved watch and pray,—
Watch but one hour with Thee!
To see what watch they keep;
And finding all asleep!
In death, what said they last?
Ere on them, through the tumult of that night,
Majestic silence passed.
What was the last they said?
“Let not your heart be troubled,” (Thine must break!)
“Nor let it be afraid.”
Still caring for the sheep!
We know no word nor touch of Thine were vain:
All in our depths sink deep.
Some fail not watch to keep;
Oh, come and see, and try us once again,
And find us not asleep!
NOLI ME TANGERE.
Those human ministries so sweet of old?
Further than starry distances can sever,
Severed by these Thy words, so starlike cold:
Thy “Touch Me not; I am not yet ascended.”
The tears and kisses fell upon Thy feet;
Now, on Thy rapturous Resurrection morning,
May no adoring touch Thy triumph greet?
Nay, “Touch Me not; I am not yet ascended.”
Are the old needs of earth for ever fled?
Is the last vase of alabaster broken?
Were the last balms outpoured upon Thee dead?
Yet “Touch Me not; I am not yet ascended.”
Thy feet still linger by the well-known ways?
How, when the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee,
High o'er the narrow light of our dim days,
Still “Touch Me not; I am not yet ascended.”
Those grave words struck no discord of surprise;
Glad from Thy Presence on Thine errands hasting,
What strange sweet secret read she in Thine eyes,
Solving Thy “Touch Me not; not yet ascended.”
The highest heavens, the lowly heart to fill;
Earth's “Blest” transfiguring to Heaven's “Blest rather;”—
She touched Thee when she left to do Thy will:
We touch Thee ever; for Thou art ascended!
“Ye did it unto Me in these My least;”
Henceforth we touch Thee, serve Thee in each other,
Receive, adoring in each Eucharist:
We touch Thee ever; for Thou art ascended.
Heals and revives the heart from sin to cease;
In the great calm and sunshine of Thy peace:
We touch Thee ever; for Thou art ascended.
Feel in each sacrifice Thine “Unto Me;”
Thy heavens to us are no dim far-off splendour;
Thy heavens enfold us, centering in Thee,
Who fillest all, high over all ascended,
Death of our death, since we with Thee have died;
Life of our life, spirit with spirit blended,
Thy Spirit breathing ever through Thy Bride.
Thy works she works, because Thou art ascended,
Filled with the fulness of the Incarnate Son;
From age to age Thee through the Night revealing,
Until the Day reveals that we are one,
And from the heavens the spotless Bride descendeth.
THE WINTER SOLSTICE.
(ST. THOMAS' DAY.)
The stair of light is won;
Earth sunward climbs once more,—
We turn to Thee, our Sun!
Saints once in anguish trod,
Darkness within, without,
To Thee, our Lord, our God!
Love conquers on Thy Cross,
And there and evermore
Wins all by willing loss;
Save scars of saving pain;
To love and save again.
Light has an open field,
And slowly, one by one,
The gates of hell shall yield.
Self's shadow falls behind;
Turning from all to Thee,
All, all, with Thee we find.
Where step by step we press;
Yet longer grows each day,
And every night is less;
Glowing from shore to shore,
And Day of Night is born,
And night shall be no more.
Yet shall the heights be won;
For summer dawns the day
Earth turns towards the Sun.
HOLIEST NIGHT!
Midnight is bright as with noon-day light;
Angels find their heaven on earth,
Hailing with hymns the marvellous birth,
The Babe, the Redeemer is near.
Winds and waves with the frail bark fight;
Over the waves walks a human form,
Human accents arrest the storm—
The Saviour, the Master is here.
Shrined in the cloud on the mountain height,
His raiment as sunshine, his face as the sun,
Prophets adoring, and glory begun—
Jesus transfigured is here!
Midnight falls on the noon-day light;
Night on the noon, and earthquake, and strife,
Death on the heart whence the worlds draw life—
Jesus in anguish is here!
Watch and pray till the morn dawns bright;
Singing and shining, in vigil stand—
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand”—
Jesus the Day-star is near!
MARRIAGE HYMN.
PRELUDE.
The sun which witnesses of Thee,
A world itself, gives life and warms,
Is what it figures Thee to be;
No lifeless glass Thy mirrors are,—
The living stream, the luminous star.
And thus,—through them we live in Thee;
Each what it pictures still presents,
And this great marriage-mystery,
This sacred one of man and wife,
Brings Christ the Life into our life.
MARRIAGE HYMN.
Yet ever one through being twain,
Through love's own ceaseless loss and gain,—
And both their full perfection reach,
Each growing the true self through each.
All promises to praise and prayer,
“Where two are gathered, there am I.”
Gone half the weight from all ye bear,
Gained twice the force for all ye do,
The sacred, ceaseless Church of two.
One in all priestly sacrifice,
Through love which makes all service free,
And finds or makes all gifts of price;
All love that made life rich before,
Through this great central love grown more.
To the Great Bridal of the Christ,
When all the life His love has won
To perfect Love is sacrificed,
And the New Song, beyond the sun,
Peals “Henceforth no more Twain but One.”
All earth's lost love shall live once more,
All lack and loss shall pass away,
And all find all not found before,—
Till all the worlds shall live and glow
In that great Love's great overflow.
ON A BAPTISM.
With the darling we were watching cradled in a dreamy rest.
Stormy winds and human wailings; ah! that sea bears many a wreck.
Looking forward strains the eyesight; looking upward opens heaven.
Breathes a Voice, a Voice thou knowest,—“Trust thy little one to Me.”
In His arms thy faith hath laid her, and He bears her on His breast.
Mother, by the love thou knowest, measure His,—it passeth thine!
ORDINATION OF PRIESTS.
To-day, upon each bowed and reverent brow?
They are the Father's Hands. The Hands that made
Are consecrating evermore and now.
Ever life-giving as they consecrate,
He only consecrates Who can create.
Which healed the leper, woke blind eyes to sight;
Touches which ever, as they hallow, heal;—
The Hands which washed the faithful feet that night,
And pierced and helpless saved the world from loss.
Lead, as He went, through service to the Cross;
Sweet service first, then costly sacrifice;
First gifts, then burdens which may seem but loss.
Love but to deeper love can consecrate;
The Priesthood follows the Diaconate.
The Hands which shall receive the soul at last,
Mighty to save, patient to train and wait,
Tender to welcome, when the Floods are past,
And stretched across the waters, through the dark
They fold the weary dove within the Ark.
THE GOSPEL IN THE EUCHARIST.
Spread for Thy Church by Thee;
Nor prophet nor evangelist
Preach the glad news so free.
All Truth and Love Divine,
In one bright point made visible,
Hence on the heart they shine.
All our Redemption won;
All it has won for us, the lost,
All it cost Thee, the Son.
Ours is the free gift given;
Thine was the blood of sacrifice,—
Ours is the wine of heaven.
The shame, the mortal strife,
The broken heart, the side transpierced;—
To us the Bread of Life.
Wrapped round Thee with our sin,
The horror of that midday gloom,
The deeper night within;—
Thy “Come, ye blessed, come!”
Thy bridal raiment, pure and white,
Thy Father's welcome home.
As on a sacred height,
That darkest and that brightest Day
Meeting before our sight;
Thy love for us hath trod,
Up to the heights of bless'd repose
Thy love prepares with God;
One sight alone we see,
Still at the Cross as at the Feast,
Behold Thee, only Thee!
AROUND A TABLE, NOT A TOMB.
He willed our gathering-place to be;
When, going to prepare our home,
Our Saviour said, “Remember Me.”
Marking the place where Jesus lay;—
Empty the tomb, the angels gone,
The stone for ever rolled away.
Thy three dark days of death are o'er;
Thou art the Life, our living Head,
Our living Light for evermore!
Oh, Master! are Thine own possest;
The crown of thorns, the cross, the spear,
The purple robe, the seamless vest.
The memory of an absent friend;
Not absent Thou, nor we forlorn!—
“With you each day until the end!”
We keep Thy sacred Feast with Thee;
Until within the Father's Home
Our endless gathering-place shall be.
NEVER FURTHER THAN THY CROSS.
Never higher than Thy feet!
Here earth's precious things grow dross;
Here earth's bitter things grow sweet.
Learn Thy love while gazing thus!
Sin which laid the Cross on Thee,
Love which bore the Cross for us.
And rejoicing self deny;
Here we gather love to live,
Here we gather faith to die.
And our service here unite;
Soldiers of Thy Cross we fight.
Still to this our hearts shall tend;
Where our earliest hopes began,
There our last aspirings end;
We, in Thee redeemed, complete,
Through Thy Cross made pure and white,
Cast our crowns before Thy feet.
THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE.
All ways are thorny mazes without Thee;
Where hearts are pierced, and thoughts all aimless stray:
In Thee the heart stands firm, the life moves free;
Thou art our Way.
Questions the ages break against in vain
Confront the spirit in its untried youth;
It starves, while sifting poison from the grain:
Thou art the Truth!
Earth beyond earth no faintest ray can give;
Heaven's shadeless noontide blinds our mortal sight;
In Thee we look on God, and love, and live:
Thou art our Light!
Doubts none can solve heave wild on every side,
Wave meeting wave of thought in ceaseless shock;
On Thee the soul rests calm amidst the tide:
Thou art our Rock!
All ways without Thee paths that end in death;
All life without Thee with death's harvest rife;
All truths dry bones, disjoined, and void of breath:
Thou art our Life!
Our Way and End! the way is rest with Thee!
O living Truth, the truth is life in Thee!
O Life essential, life is bliss with Thee!
For Thou art Love!
THE FOLD AND THE PALACE.
THE FOLD.
But opened now to all,
Reaching from regions high as thought,
Low as our race can fall:
Where breaks the earliest day;
Down where the deepest shadow chills
The wanderer's downward way.
Who guards it day and night;
Mightier than all, His gentle hand,
His eyes the source of light.
Entered those precincts blest
Freedom and life and rest.
Blinded and wearied sore;
How can I find the plainest way,
Or reach the nearest door?
When did I hear that tone?—
Awful as thunder, soft as thought,
Familiar as mine own.
I press towards that voice,
And, ere I know it, am within,
And all within rejoice.
THE PALACE.
Athwart the night's cold gloom
Stream its soft music and warm light,—
A Palace, yet a Home.
Are called therein to dwell;—
“Laden with sin, oppressed with care,”
The calling suits me well.
Yet I have often tried,
And scarce have strength to try again,
Will one, then, be denied?
So strange, yet so well known;
Divine, as when it rent the hills,
Yet human as my own.
Like clouds around the sun,
And where they stood, and where I knelt,
Behold that matchless One!
He hears ere I can call;
Jesus! my first step is to Thee,
And Thy first gift is all!
ONCE AND FOR EVER.
For evermore Thou art:
Each moment of the sacred past
Lives in the sacred Heart.
And Thy “to-day” above,
Thy Godhead, manhood, death, and birth,
One through eternal love.
Child on the mother's knee;
Child for the children evermore,
Only the childlike see.
Mute 'neath the mortal pain,
Still on the throne the Lamb we know,
Still “as it had been slain.”
We still Thy wounds may greet;
Hear Thy “Come hither, and behold”
The piercëd hands and feet.
For evermore Thou art:
Each moment of the living past
Lives in the loving Heart.
FIRST AND LAST.
My Lord, my Life, my Rest!
Borne in Thine arms the wide world o'er—
A lamb upon Thy breast.
Were wandering far and wide,
And after them my heart would haste,
To bring them to Thy side.
I could but give my best:
Feebly I sought to still the plaint,
And bear them on my breast.
The sheep are Thine, not mine:
And each one lamb of Thine.
A lamb upon Thy breast;
Thy lost Thou seekest evermore:
I seek, with Thee, and rest.
Still learning what Thou art—
Our Lord, our Life, our Strength, our Rest!—
Borne on Thy changeless Heart.
My Lord, my Life, my Rest!
Borne in Thine arms the dark flood o'er—
A lamb upon Thy breast!
REST FOR THE HEAVY-LADEN.
The hush of love or fear!
His voice the Highest sendeth forth,
The still small voice is here.
The world's hoarse murmurs under,
Its loudest din above,
It speaketh not in thunder,
But in words, and the tone is love.
It calls, and a gift it offers;
To whom are those words addressed?
“Come, ye that are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.”
Till strength and hope have fled,
And lavished the years that come not again
For that which is not bread;
Weary in heart and limb,
With a strength each day more low,
And a hope each day more dim;
Weary in soul and spirit,
Toiling with hearts oppressed;
“Come to Me all that labour,
And I will give you rest.”
With heavy hand and strong,
The weight in the air of measureless fear,
Or of hope deferrëd long?
The sorrow which freezeth tears
With the force of a sudden blow,
The long, dull pressure of weary years
Bowing you silently low?
Many the burdens and hard
Wherewith the heart is pressed:
“Come all that are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.”
To beguile the blithe and young;
But to you the world is honest,
It has ceased to promise, long.
The world has store of these,—
For you it no cure professes,
It offers you no ease.
But Christ has an arm almighty
And a balm for the faintest breast:
“Come, ye that are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.”
In dust your tired heads bow?
The rest He gives is deeper,
And He will give it now.
No dull oblivious pain
In the lull of pain repressed,
But all your hearts to steep
In perfect and conscious rest,—
Rest that shall make you strong
To serve among the blest:
“Come, all that are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.”
Led by the Father on,
Feeling His smile, and reconciled
To all that He has done;
'Neath the yoke of the Lord who died;
Of a soldier who knows how the fight will end
With a Leader true and tried;
The rest of a subject heart,
Of its best desires possessed:
“Come, ye that are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.”
In the blood which Christ has shed;
From the pang of vain regret
In the thought that He has led.
Rest in His perfect love,
Rest in His tender care;
Rest in His presence for you above,
In His presence with you here.
Rest in Him, slain and risen,
The Lamb, and the Royal Priest:
“Come all that are heavy-laden,
And I will give you rest.”
“HITHER TO ME!”
Gathered to Thee;
The thousand streams in one stream meeting—
The thousand hearts with one throb beating,
Hanging on Thee, hanging on Thee;
All pressed to Thee!
Thou royally the throng addressing,
Divinely calledst each to blessing,
“Hither to Me! hither to Me!
Hither to Me!
The hardest yoke is easy near Me,
With Me is rest for all the weary,
Hither to Me! hither to Me!”
“Hither to Me!”
O words whose links death cannot sever!
O balm for all life's ills for ever!—
“Hither to Me! hither to Me!”
“Hither to Me!”
Earth's thousand noises piercing keenly,
O'er wildest storms they float serenely—
“Hither to Me! hither to Me!”
“Hither to Me!”
We hear them daily clearer, dearer,
Drawing us ever higher, nearer—
“Hither to Me! hither to Me!”
THE TWO ACCUSATIONS.
Of that dread day that twice was veiled in night;
The form that quivered there when noon was high
Rests low amidst the shrouds and spices now,
And reverent hands have wiped the thorn-crowned brow.
But where it bowed at noon, death-dewed and white,
The Roman's accusation meets my sight,
Earth's homage rendered in her own despite,
Proclaiming in three tongues thy Right Divine!
Another accusation black and clear;
These were the crimes that slew Thee!—They are mine!
But it is torn, and stained with sacred blood;
No more a sentence, but a pardon sealed by God.
THE TWO REPROACHES.
Thy voice made rocks Thy fountains; ocean wavesA wall around Thy chosen; desert caves
Their temples; flames their car of victory.
Thy touch made lepers pure as infancy.
Thy word lulls storms to sleep, like babes at play;
Or, as they rage, bids them white chrisoms lay
For flowers. Thy smile makes tears of sinful men
The joy of angels. Shall we wonder, then,
That blinded hate, and envy masked in scorn,
Twining for Thee the crown of sharpest thorn,
But wove a wreath of glory for Thy brow?
And broken hearts, which sins and sorrows bow,
Scanning through all the heaven of Thy Word
Some special guiding-star of hope to see;
And angels, searching tributes for their Lord,
Finding these words of those that hated Thee,
“This Man receiveth sinners,” and again
(Written in blood earth's darkest record o'er),
“He savëd others,” pause and search no more;—
Both finding all they sought, gaze and adore.
“HE SAVED OTHERS.”
Hurled all their darts against the Crucified,
Found they no fault but this in Him so tried?
“He saved others!”
On withered limbs they fell like heavenly dew;
The dead have felt them, and have lived anew:
“He saved others.”
Thou canst not raise them to Thy thorn-crown'd brow,
Nor on them Thy parched lips and forehead bow:
“He saved others!”
Crushed, outcast hearts, grew joyful as they heard;
For every woe it had a healing word:
“He saved others!”
Hast Thou no word for this Thine agony?
Thou pitiedst all; doth no man pity Thee?
“He saved others!”
Physician! and Thy wounds unstanched must bleed;
Hast Thou no balm for this Thy sorest need?
“He saved others!”
One word from Thee, and low those mockers lie;
Thou mak'st no movement, utterest no cry,
And savest us.
HAGAR'S WELL.
Broken at last the spirit once so high,
From thine own child in maddening anguish flying;
Thy only prayer, “Let me not see him die!”
Came, and such joyful promise brought to thee,
Thy lips new named it, thenceforth, an Evangel,
“The well of Him who lives and seeth me.”
Thirsting, ay dying! still the son is there!
And hark! by name, once more, from heav'n they hail thee,
Calling thee back, through duty, from despair.
“Lift up the lad and hold him in thy hand.
What ails thee? God hath heard.” All heaven befriends thee,
Folding love's promise in love's sweet command.
The angels (always serving) make thee free;
They see, (or how could Heaven bear the pity?)
They know, they see the Fountain hid from thee.
However close beside our paths they be;
Wells in all deserts, springs upon all mountains,
But only God can open eyes to see.
The water in the cup man filled “all spent;”
The well is there, the well for which we're thirsting,
For every need some well, foreseen, and meant.
The well is there, the child is by its brink;
We find the well in lifting up the thirsting,
Our thirst is quenched in giving them to drink.
The well is there (for all, for thee, for me);
Only, O God, Thy touch our eyes unsealing,
The old wells, day by day, afresh to see!
Our deepest thirst is still for Thee, for Thee!
Light of all eyes, and Fount of all our fountains,
Open our eyes, each day, Thyself to see!
MARAH AND ELIM.
Three long nights of heavy silence, gladdened by no sound of streams.
Surely now our trial ceaseth! surely now our goal is won!
Eyes whose tears were dried by anguish overflow with tears of bliss.
Drinking draughts of deeper pleasure from the smile of grateful eyes.
But a moment! from the nation bursts a sob of wildest pain.
Mothers by the mocking fountains lay their little ones to die.
Streams for which we prayed and waited, bitter streams, but mock our thirst.
Fiercely then our foes o'erwhelming? Were our first-born spared for this?
Better ne'er a hope have tasted than to sink in this despair!
He Who is the joy of heaven feeleth grief in thy distrust.
E'en to-day the streams thou loathest shall thy best refreshment be.
Trains thee for, and storeth for thee, joys thy heart can scarce conceive.
Let no memory of murmurs mar for thee that blessed calm.
For the fount of deepest gladness springeth near the place of tears.
MY STRENGTH AND MY HEART FAILETH.
Thine eye each pang hath seen;
Scarce can I lift my heart on high,
Yet, Lord, on Thee I lean;
Thy gentle, “It is I:”
For Thou, my ever-living Lord,
Knowest what it is to die.
Thy life my life in death;
For in the lowest depths, I know
Thine arms are underneath.
Which holds the mother fast;
It is the mother's gentle clasp
Around her darling cast.
Knowing Thy pity, long;
For feeble as my faith may be,
The hand I clasp is strong.
“COME AND SEE.”
Lamb of God, 'tis Thee we seek;
For the wants which press us now
Other aid is all too weak.
Canst Thou take our sins away?
May we find repose in Thee?
From the gracious lips to-day
As of old, breathes “Come and see.”
We would leave the past behind;
We would scale the mountain's brow,
Learning more Thy heavenly mind.
Still, a look is all our lore,
The transforming look to Thee;
From the Living Truth once more
Breathes the answer, “Come and see.”
How shall we Thine image best
Stamp in light upon our brow,
Bear in love upon our breast?
Still a look is all our might;
Looking draws the heart to Thee,
Sends us from the absorbing sight
With the message, “Come and see.”
All the springs of life are low;
Sin and grief our spirits bow,
And we wait Thy call to go.
From the depths of happy rest
Where the just abide with Thee,
From the Voice which makes them blest
Falls the summons, “Come and see.”
From life's dawning to its end;
Every hand may clasp another,
And the loneliest find a friend;
Till the veil is drawn aside,
And from where her home shall be
Bursts upon the enfranchised Bride
The triumphant “Come and see.”
“IT IS I; BE NOT AFRAID.”
Above the tempest, soft and clear
What still small accents greet mine ear?—
'Tis I; be not afraid.
'Tis I, who gave thy blind eyes sight;
'Tis I, thy Lord, thy Life, thy Light;
'Tis I; be not afraid.
Have spent their deadly force on Me;
They bear no breath of wrath to thee;
'Tis I; be not afraid.
To thee it is no draught accurst,
The hand that gives it thee is pierced;
'Tis I; be not afraid.
Mine arms are underneath thee spread,
My blessing is around thee shed;
'Tis I; be not afraid.
Shall rest, 'mid thousand welcomes sweet,
One well-known Voice thy heart shall greet;
'Tis I; be not afraid.
EUREKA.
For once my heart was poor,
And I have found a treasury
Of love, a boundless store.
I was so sick at heart,
Have met with One Who knows my case,
And knows the healing art.
For I was wearied sore,
And I have found a mighty arm
Which holds me evermore.
My feet so wide did roam,
And One has sought me from afar,
And beareth me safe home.
For I have found a Friend
Who knows my heart's most secret depths,
Yet loves me without end.
And He had loved so long,
With love so faithful and so deep,
So tender and so strong.
Have heard and known His Voice,
And hear it still from day to day,—
Can I enough rejoice?
“SUMMER IN THE SOUL.”
When Summer came to me,
The “Summer in the soul,”
And set the life-springs free.
A heavy weight of night,
When the Sun arose within,
And filled my heart with light.
Ice-fetters still and strong,
When the living spring gushed forth,
And filled my soul with song.
That Sun, it setteth never;
The Fountain in my heart
Springs full and fresh for ever.
My Summer, Lord, Thou art;
Summer to me, and Day,
And life-springs in my heart.
Thou livest, and art Love,
Art Love, and lovest me,—
Fearless I look above!
Thy love casts out my fear;
Heaven is no longer far,
Since Thou, its Sun, art near.
NEW YEAR'S HYMN.
From any other morn?
No festal garb doth Nature wear
Because a Year is born.
The air more full of song,
And silent from the caves of night
Glide the gray hours along.
So fair this morn appears,—
How know I where to-morrow lies?
God grants not life by years.
Thy hand in blessing lay;
Give us this day our daily bread,
Renew our hearts to-day.
Is that, through Thee, forgiven,
To us each day our daily task,
Our daily strength be given:
Floods its full light abroad,
We, glad within Thy heavenly home,
May keep the Day of God.
SUNDAY EVENING HYMN.
And angels' work is ended,
And to the chorus of the Blest
The last hymn has ascended.
Tranquil as an infant's sleep
Shadows eve the meadow;
Let Thy peace with calm as deep
The wearied spirit shadow.
All their labours bore Thee,
Lowly at Thy feet we stand,
Lay our work before Thee.
Pardon Thou the imperfect deed,
Crown the weak endeavour;
Prosper Thou the heavenly seed,
Work Thou with us ever.
In all our efforts mingle;
How seldom mortal eye is clear,
Or human purpose single.
Let Thy blood, O dying Lord,
Blot out all our evil;
Let Thy touch, O Living Word,
All our errors shrivel.
By Thy hand be nourished;
Let them be Thy lambs indeed,
In thy bosom cherished.
To the griefs we cannot reach
Breathe Thou consolation;
To the hearts we cannot teach
Bring Thou Thy salvation.
Vibrate through the seven,—
Sabbaths, work-days, pleasures, tears,
Mould us, all, for heaven.
That taking thus each joy and woe
As Thy gifts parental,
To us life's daily bread may grow
Viands sacramental.
EARLY RISING HYMN.
Wake, arise!
Wake, and let thy joyous greeting
Pierce the skies!
God to thee an angel sendeth,
From the azure heavens descendeth
Fresh as May
The new-born Day.
With blessings rife;
In her hand a cup she beareth,
A cup of life.
Every drop of its full measure
Is a pearl of heavenly treasure:
Haste; arise!
Claim the prize!
First be poured,
Poured in lowly adoration
To thy Lord!
To Him who bore such anguish for thee,
Him who, risen, watcheth o'er thee,
Wake and raise
Songs of praise!
Child of Day,
Saints are weeping, sinners sleeping,
Rise and pray!
Think what Night is deepening o'er thee,
Think what Morning lies before thee,
Child of Day,
Rise and pray!
With strength divine;
Wholly let Thy love possess me,—
Me and mine.
Let each moment soar above
Laden with some work of love,
Till we rise
To Thy skies.
Lord, to Thee!
Every act may be communion,
Lord, with Thee!
And Thy presence ever near us
May o'er each temptation cheer us
Thus to rise—
Thus to rise!
The Three Wakings, And Other Early Songs.
“THE THREE WAKINGS.”
[_]
Among the ancient Laplanders magic was an hereditary art. There were,
however, some magicians of a higher character, to whom, in three supernatural
sicknesses or trances—one in childhood, one in youth, and one in
manhood—the spirits themselves taught the secrets of the invisible world.
These were honoured by the whole nation as seers.
—Mone Geschichte des Heidenthums.
Among the ancient Laplanders magic was an hereditary art. There were, however, some magicians of a higher character, to whom, in three supernatural sicknesses or trances—one in childhood, one in youth, and one in manhood—the spirits themselves taught the secrets of the invisible world. These were honoured by the whole nation as seers. —Mone Geschichte des Heidenthums.
Argument.
—The poet-child plays on the margin of the river of Life. There the First Trance overpowers him. He awakens from it to the wonderful beauty of the universe. The magic boat bears him away from the broad stream of life to the regions of fancy. There the Second Trance overshadows him. In it he is aroused to the sense of duty and the necessity of work. He girds himself for the strife. In the flush of the triumph which succeeds it, he is overcome by the Third Trance. In it are revealed to him the grace of God, redemption, and the free service of love.
I.
The infant poet played;
The grave old rocks above him
Laughed at the mirth he made.
Lay idle on the shore,
Without or sail or oar.
Quivered and fluttered in glee,
And the merry rills from the mighty hills
Shouted as loud as he.
For they deemed him one of them;
And the snowdrop laughed in her quiet joy,
Till she shook on her delicate stem.
And its depths no sailor knows;
It comes from a place no foot can trace,
'Mid the clouds and the ancient snows;
Many a gallant bark;—
(Do they know that at last o'er a chasm vast
It leaps into the dark?)
Were his playmates glad and sweet,
To bathe his snowy feet;
Were the flowers of the sky,—
Too high, perhaps, to gather,
But too beautiful to die;
Its heavens and its sea,
Was his play-room, full of play-mates,
Each one as glad as he.
Strange languor o'er him stole;
His eyes grew dim, and faint each limb,
And dark the sunny soul,
Folded him to her breast,
And birds and waves and breezes
Lulled him to quiet rest.
II.
When he broke that magic trance,
Rose from the ground, and gazed around
With a new and rapturous glance.
Expanded as he slept,
That such a tide of light and joy
Around his senses swept?
Not a breeze the waters moved,
But it thrilled through sense and spirit,
Like the voice of one beloved.
From his depths of light on high—
Each lowly flower from its dewy bower,—
Beamed like a loving eye.
In love and wonder meek;
Or had she learned to speak?
And no stranger guest was he:
As the silvery fish in the silvery brook
Leaps in its wanton glee,
When the early mists are curled,—
His spirit bathed and revelled
In the beauty of the world.
He was content to see;
It was enough to listen—
It was enough to be!
In this Eden to abide,
But the pearly boat began to float
Languidly down the tide.
Where the great navies lay,
From the din and strife away.
Made music as it went,
Like lyres and lutes and silvery flutes,
In sweet confusion blent;
Roofed with many a gem,
(But one of the countless number
Had graced a diadem);
Where reigned nor sun nor moon,
But a magic light as still as night,
And warm as the softest noon.
By those shores of wondrous things,
'Mid the murmur of dreamy voices,
And the waving of viewless wings;
Where the gems lay thick as flowers,
Like the fountain 'midst leafy bowers;
Where, in the chequered glade,
With wild but tuneful laughter,
The fairy people played;
And the unclouded sky,
Where the stately Attic temple
Reared its white shafts on high;
The brave and wise and strong,
Earth's loftiest and sweetest souls,
Lived and made life a song;
Where the thunderbolts were made,
And spirits and gods and mighty men
Met in the mystic shade.
Smiled brotherly on him;
Crept over soul and limb.
Lay heavy on his breath,
And the fair world was shadowed o'er
With a darkness as of death;
And the light of the common day,
And the common air on his fevered brow,
And the fields of his childish play;
The vessel moored at last,
And he stept on the bank, and languidly sank
'Mid the graves of the great that were past.
III.
With its soft and gorgeous light,
Beneath the solemn night;
In their grand reality;
'Mid the shadowy glooms of many tombs,
On the shores of a heaving sea.
Lay glittering by his side;
Breastplate and casque and girdle,
And a sword of temper tried.
On his brow were dented deep;
And he woke to a steadfast purpose
From the night of that awful sleep;
Beside his couch had been,
Clad in the old prophetic garb
And stern with the prophet's mien.
“What is outshines what seems;
Life has no time for dreams.
Knowest thou nought of sin?
Hast thou not heard the groans without,
Or felt the sting within?
Thy brethren toil in chains;
The body is racked by hunger,
And the heart has sharper pains.
Are sinking into the grave;
And tender hearts are growing hard
For the want of a hand to save.
Are perishing around;
And thou pourest out thy cup of life
Upon the barren ground.
Rise, arm thee for the fight;
Strike boldly for the right!
Rise, clothed with vigour new:
This fallen earth is no place for mirth;
Arise, go forth and do!”
Through all his nature ran,
And from that sleep of visions deep
The Boy awoke a Man.
Through beauty and weal and ill,
And his eyes were lit, and his frame was knit
By the strength of a fixëd will.
Was but the lamp of life;
The abounding earth, in her beauty and mirth,
But the field of the mortal strife.
'Neath ages of wrong and shame,
Till life to the stiff limbs came.
Where the strong bear down the weak,
With the flaming swords of living words,
He fought for the poor and meek.
Or sick to be soothed and upheld;
Or a generous deed lay hidden,
Or a generous purpose quelled;
For the want of a cheering word;—
The music of his earnest voice
Above the din was heard;
And the tongue of envy hushed,
And a tumult of wild, exulting praise
Throughout the nations rushed.
And hasted his steps to greet;
And bowed beneath his feet.
Over his soul was thrown,
And he on the height of his human might
Lay desolate and lone;
His spirit turned on high,
And he called on the God of his childhood
With a loud and bitter cry:
And bow the reverent knee;
But I am not God, nor a godlike man,
That thus they kneel to me.
They call me just and good;
And I cannot stay my failing breath,
Nor do the things I would.
But in me is no might to save;
And I sink into the grave.
With Thee, with Thee, is might;
O stay me with Thy love and strength,
O clothe me with Thy light!”
IV.
Which came upon him then,
No fitful gleams of a land of dreams
Which burst on his dazzled ken;
Of the land which we see afar,
Where earth's firmest ground dissolves away,
And men see things as they are.
In a famine-stricken land,
The gifts of a gracious hand.
In idle and thankless waste;
And when from its idlesse startled,
It gave away the rest,
To garland its guilty head,—
It took the homage as its due,
Then cried like the rest for bread.
He cried, “It is I; it is I;
Father, forgive, forgive my sin!”
And he cried with a bitter cry.
Once more he looked on high,
And in the depths of heaven,—
In the calm of the upper sky,—
A glory surpassing bright,
Clad in unborrowed light.
And lay aside the crown,
And to that land of famine
Come, touched with pity, down;
And minister to all:
No service was for Him too mean,
No care of love too small.
They crowned Him with no crown;
And the dying bed they made for Him
Was not a bed of down.
Falls dimly on mortal ears;
The angels were mute with wonder,
And the poet with grateful tears.
The captive heart was free,—
Let me Thy servant be!”
In the home where he played a child;
His mother held his feverish hand,
His sisters wept and smiled.
With a pure and fervent love;
He loved God's sun and earth and skies,
Though his home lay far above.
Fused to a golden cup;
It would carry water for parched lips,
So he thankfully took it up.
To tread where his Master trod,
To gather and knit together
The family of God:
To pass through this world of sin,
From the place of peace within;
And a heart set free from care,
To minister to every one
Always and everywhere.
A lonely man he stood;
Around him gathered tenderly
A lowly brotherhood.
Yet the world knew them not;
It had not known their Master,—
And they sought no higher lot.
And He knew them Who died and rose;
And the poet knew that the lowest place
Was that which the Highest chose.
THE THREE TRANCES.
(ANOTHER READING OF THE VISIONS OF THE NORTHERN SEER.)
And in the fount of life
Which, gushing from its hidden cave
In many a clear and sparkling wave,
Each with sweet music rife,
Wells in the morning sunlight up
E'en to its stony brim,
Dropping into each flowery cup
That trembles on the rim,
Thence trickling through the long soft grass
That springs up green where'er it pass,
(E'en from the stones it lives among
Ringing a clear and hearty song,
Each joyous chime and merry burst
As fresh and glad as 'twere the first),
I bathed, and quenched my healthy thirst,
Until my heart grew wild.
I shouted to the shouting surf,
I laughed with the merry streams;
My playmates were the birds and bees,
The noisy wind, the whispering breeze,
And changeful summer gleams.
When Nature drooped and was sad,
Weary with thirst and heat,
The tread of my light feet
Was cool and musical,
As when, at evening, fall
Drop by drop in lonely pools the summer showers,
And the desert looked up and was glad.
I strove with the maddened storm,
I leapt the crag with the waterfall;
For the blood in my veins was warm,
And storms, and streams, and gleams, and all
The mighty creatures of the wild,
In their fierce exulting play,
They welcomed me
To their company,
And they laughed to see a little child
As strong and as glad as they.
And a weight upon my heart,
And my breath came slow,
Laden with heavy sighs;
And one I did not know
Ever to me
Clung wearily,
And whispered that we never more should part.
He dragged me downward with a heavy hand;
And on the mountains, where I used to be
As mountain breezes free,
He came, and then my steps fell heavily.
And in the forest glad and lone,
Where winds and ancient trees,
And the torrent and the breeze,
Had talked to me as to a fellow of their own,
His heavy breath my voice would choke,
His wings would cloud my spirit o'er,
I could not answer when they spoke,
And I was of their fellowship no more.
The waters laughed—I could not laugh;
In their ancient dwelling
Nature's founts were welling,
Life-giving as of old, but not for me to quaff.
By my side,
And 'neath his heavy tread the springs were dried.
Ever young.
My step had lost its spring,
The young winds sang their wonted song
The flowers among,
A song I might not sing.
Played their wild play together
As of old.
I could not play, and grew to dread the storm,—
The blood in Nature's veins was warm,
Mine ran cold.
Nature had laid her down to sleep
In the solitude,
My step no more awoke the wilderness,
My voice no more her parchëd heart could steep
With life and good,
Like fountains gushing in a thirsty place;
Nature no more was glad to see my face,
For I was faint and sad as she,
Ever with me that Dark One went
With heavy footsteps wearily.
He drank my cup of life till it was dry,
He weighed upon my heart till it grew cold;
He touched my eyelids hot and heavily,
And nothing smiled as it had smiled of old.
Where the breath of spring came slow in languid sighs,
And smiles on me
Beamed tearfully
From out the tender depths of violet eyes;
My heart within me sank.
I laid me down upon the bank and wept;
A sleep, which was not sleep, came o'er my soul:
Men mourned to see my light of life thus fade;
They knew not that the Ancient One
That shadow o'er my soul had thrown,
That He might commune with me in the shade.
That cloud of sleep around my sense did roll,
That He might come to me in visions as I slept.
They knew not that my sleep had dreams—
Dreams to which all that seem most real beside
The changeful image of most changeful gleams.
O'er which in gusts do sweep
Visions of heaven;
The body but a closëd lid,
By which the real world is hid
From the spirit slumbering dark below;
And all our earthly strife and woe,
Tossings in slumber to and fro;
And all we know of heaven and light
In visions of the day or night
To us is given.
In that mysterious seeming slumber;
Nor yet with Him alone,
But blessed spirits without number,
Who crowd around His throne,
And loud and clear the tide of praises swell;—
Nor only in that lofty sphere they dwell,
But round His children throng,
Invisibly ever,
And pour their glorious song,
Though audible never,
When not a breeze has stirred,
A quiver thrills through all the silent wood;
Can it have heard?
O what a drunkenness of joy my soul doth steep
With thought of the unuttered visions of that sleep!
A prophet amongst men:
They honour me as one whose eyes
Have looked upon the mysteries
Of the true world where spirits dwell,
To whom the great book is unrolled.
O! if thus reverently they deem
Of the poor fragments of that dream
Which can in human words be told,
What would they think of that I cannot tell?
He who so long of late
Was my associate
No longer closely in my pathway stood,
But in the sky,
Heavily,
And to something of my former life I woke.
The blood-full vein,
The bounding step, the beaming eye,
Came not again;
Joys that too quickly came and fled,
To find a name.
The tears that started in my eye,
I knew not whence,
And ere I could have questioned why
Were from hence,—
The heart that danced amongst the forms of spring,
Like them a joyous growing thing,—
These came not; yet to me were brought
A thousand joys too deep for thought:
For unto the suffering one
God sent a joy of His own;
And the storm and the solitude
Again unto my soul were good,
For ever in the silence and the din
The unseen spirits talked to mine within.
That heavy cloud doth darkly lower,
Like thunder-laden air,
Weighing my energies to earth,
A burden hard to bear.
My brothers dancing round
With strength's exulting bound,
Impatiently my heart would pray
That I might be even as they,
Even as I had been;
But then some gentle sprite would hover by,
And breathe a high and cheering word,
Such as the heart's deep waters stirred,
And all my grief would melt in ecstasy.
Nor only 'neath the cloud,
By suffering, is my spirit bowed,
But with too great a weight of glory,
As with long years my head is hoary,
This feeble frame dissolves away,
Before the blaze of that full day;
Life, breathing with too strong a breath,
Will crush this body into death.
Hath come close to my side as of old;
Hath laid his heavy hand upon my breast,
Until my blood ran cold;
The light of life from me;
Hath bound me with a threefold chain
That draggeth heavily,—
All my raptured soul to steep
In the sleep which is not sleep.
To me he is no more unknown,
His face has all familiar grown,
And dearer than the blessed sun,
For with him comes the Ancient One.
Shadow my spirit o'er.
Three times thy hand hath been on me
Heavily;
Come with yet heavier grasp, and crush
This frame to dust.
Three times thy breath hath dimmed my light
Into night;
Come and breathe on it mightily,
Till it die.
Three times the cloud of sleep o'er my soul
Thou didst roll;
Come now, and fix the shadow there,
Let me sleep e'er,
Evermore.
Nay; with loud voice this slumber break,
That I may wake,
And be with the Ancient One
By His throne.
Come now, and with no feeble hand,
Strain thy band,
Until this heavy veil be riven,
Which shuts my spirit from the light;
Come, Strong One, bear my soul to heaven,
And crush this lid which shrouds my sight;
I care not what the anguish be,
So I be free;
Come, choke this slow and labouring breath,
And I will bless thee, Death.
THE FORGET-ME-NOT.
A spring gushing near,
No fairy queen could
Queenlier fare.
Bold friars gray
Filling their baskets,—
“For the convent,” said they.
Gossiped there long;
Winds brought her fragrance,
Birds brought her song.
Let the light through;
The blithe stream would pour her
Draughts of sweet dew.
The warm heavens smiled;
They all loved her dearly,
The forest's fair child.
Dreamily by,
By the fount in the wild wood,
'Neath the blue sky.
Stream, bird, and wind,
She knew not they loved her,
Knew they were kind.
In the fount pure and cold,
A vision amazing
She saw there unfold.
Met her blue eye,
A golden star gleaming,
A miniature sky.
The fair vision lay;
She gazed there all day:
Heard not the breeze.
Till the soft even
Shadowed the trees.
But they seemed far,
While she lay pining
For her lost star.
The night-winds' soft stir,
Seemed harsh and bustling,
Strange voices to her.
Nor the stream's old kind tone;
'Mid so many that loved her,
She wept there alone:
The Sun rose anew,
The high forest piercing,
Pierced her heart through.
He met them and smiled,
The eye of heaven gazing
On her, heaven's child.
The Truth brighter far,
The blue loving heaven,
The Sun for the star.
The trees grave and tall,
The deep sky above her,
The blithe insects small,
She loved them each one,
For they all loved the Sun,
And the Sun loved them all.
MAY SONG.
Birds are warbling, insects whirring,
Striving in harmonious strife
Which can catch and drink the more
Of the crystal fount of life
Which around is bubbling o'er.
When the Earth, spell-bound in sleep,
Like the Sleeping Beauty lay,
Sunk in magic slumbers deep;
Came and kissed her marble cheek,
And the icy spell was broken:
Words which ages could not speak
In this burst of life are spoken;
And the Palace, still so long,
Breaks into a flood of song.
Seem one flood of life and love;
Drinking life and rapture thence:
Nature all one glorious Psalm,
We all nerve responsive thrilling;
She a tree of Gilead's balm,
Into weary hearts distilling;
She all light and melody,
We all sense to hear and see.
Forth the infant river wells,
Striking on the pebbles round
Merry peals of fairy bells;
Leaping up in showers of spray,
Parts the pure uncoloured light
Into many a threadlet bright;
Broidering its garments white,
Flashing gems from every ray.
Perfumes fresh and soft and clear
Sail along the limpid air;
Birds are singing, fish are springing,
Grass is growing, water flowing,
All the world awake and stirring;
And shall I be idly hearing,
While my heart thus glows with love,
And my soul o'erflows with life,
She could bravely strive her strife?
Music only in my heart;
Lord, give me some choral part!
Give this lisping heart a word—
Word that may be felt and heard;
I would rise and praise thee too—
Lord, let me go forth and do!
Fell upon my inward ear:—
“Hush, impatient heart, be still;
Restless waters break the light,
Shivering faith's deep mystery
Into fancy's prisms bright;
Breaking that by which we see
To a show for vulgar sight.
See that deep blue violet flower
Bend the quickening waters o'er;
Eagerly they sparkle up,
Dropping in her open cup,
While she in her quiet eye
Drinks the colours of the sky.
Such the faithful heart should be,
Feeding on Nature silently,
That holy food shall make it strong—
On earth a heavenly star to shine,
True mirror of the life divine.
So thy life shall be a voice,
Speaking words best heard above,
Bidding weary souls rejoice,
Waking palsied hearts to love.”
THE NORTHERN SPRING.
With the giants of the Frost;
In his god-like strength contending,
Single-handed, 'gainst a host.
Wind with wind in deadly stife;
Battle-cries and roar of conflicts,
Where the Dark Ones fought for life?
Thundering o'er the din of war;
Striking lightning from the storm-cloud?—
Dreadful in his wrath is Thor!
Henceforth fear we not their worst;
For their giant strength is broken,
And their icy chains are burst.
Victory and light are won;
And the victor doffs his armour,
Girding robes of triumph on.
Gazing in his love and pride
Where, in trembling mists infolded,
Beams his own enfranchised bride!
Greet him with the dance and song:
Beautiful is Thor in triumph,
As in battle he is strong.
Glorious art thou, O Sun!
Many are the names we call you,
Yet the homage is but one.
With the sense that ye are fraught
With a Presence and a Purpose
Passing human word or thought;
Makes and keeps you so divine;
Every blade of grass a shrine;
Miracles in every clod:
For beyond man's master-pieces
Is the simplest work of God.
A JOURNEY ON THE SOUTH-DEVON RAILWAY.
Over the still and emerald meadow;
The sheep are cropping the fresh spring grass,
And never raise their heads as we pass;
The cattle are taking their noon-day rest,
And chewing the cud with a lazy zest,
Or bathing their feet in the reedy pool
Switch their tails in the shadows cool;
But away, away, we may not stay,
Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,
On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won ere the set of the sun.
Sunning their wings in the azure sky;
Two white swans float to and fro
Languidly in the stream below;
Clouds, and swans, and trees, and all,
Image themselves in the quiet stream,
Passing their lives in a sunny dream;
But away, away, we may not stay,
Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,
On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won ere the set of the sun.
The ocean rests in its mid-day sleep;
The waves are heaving lazily
Where the purple sea-weeds float;
Sunbeams cross on the distant sea,
Specked by the sail of the fisher's boat;
But away, away, we may not stay,
Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,
On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won ere the set of the sun.
Where the river rushes beneath our feet,
Skirting the base of moorland hills,
By the side of rocky rills,
Where the fields are fresh with the breath of spring,
Where the earth is hushed in her noon-day prayer,
No place so secret but we come there.
On nature's mid-day sleep we break,
And are miles away ere her echoes wake;
We startle the wood-nymphs in their play,
And ere they can hide are away, away!
Away, away, we may not stay,
Panting and puffing, and snorting and starting,
And shrieking and crying, and madly flying,
On and on, there's a race to be run and a goal to be won ere the set of the sun.
BABY ALICE.
Is thy soul a beam of light,
That it twinkleth through thy dark eyes
So witching and so bright?
Our sunshine every day;
One such flower makes a summer,
One such bird makes a May.
Whose smiles are magic treasures;
Our singing-tree and talking-bird,
Our golden fount of pleasures.
Our dayspring, and our star;
All sweet names on thee we lavish,
And find thee sweeter far.
As thy sudden laughter bright?
What words can have such meaning
As thy murmurs of delight?
Better than beams of light
Is thy spirit, for it cometh
From the Fountain of all light.
Hallowing thy youth's glad feast,
Thy cup of life transforming
To a Blessed Eucharist.
Guarding from sins and harms;
For He blessed all they brought to Him,
And we laid thee in His arms.
TO OUR AMERICAN COUSINS.
One in our stormy youth;
Drinking one stream of human thought,
One spring of heavenly truth;
One in our Saviour's prayer,—
One glorious heritage is ours;
One future let us share.
Are yours, not ours alone;
Your Christian heroes of to-day,
We love them as our own.
Far in the wild free West,
To be subdued for God and man,
Replenished and possest;—
Far in the ancient East,
To be won back to truth and God,
From cramping bonds released;
And wrong to be undone;
Too many strongholds from the foe
Yet must be forced and won;—
The vanguard of the fight,
To bear the standard of His truth,
And to defend the right,
So high, and wide, and great,
On petty points of precedence
To wrangle and debate;—
(With poisonous venom rife),
Who must be angry to be heard,
Should stir us up to strife.
In wild or heathen lands,
One Bible in our hands.
One in our heavenly home,
We'll fight the battles of our King,
Until His kingdom come.
ITALY.
1848.
A thousand hearts beat freer in the thought that thou art free;
Because thou hast no common name, and thy dwelling is on high,
And folded in thy fate the fates of many nations lie.
And as the lot of common men thy lot can never be.
Three kingdoms have been thine by turns, three sceptres graced thy hand,
Three times the mighty ones of earth have bowed to thy command!
One moment thou seem'st lost amid the fierce barbaric tides;
And thou risest 'mid the tempest calm Empress of the Soul.
And for a space, as in a trance, thy passive image lay,
A fragrant breath of Beauty and of Melody divine,
Floated around thee sleeping, as around a saintly shrine.
For the homage of the knee they gave the worship of the heart.
Godlike Art and godlike Nature circling thee with magic powers,
For a dead crown of gold entwined a living crown of flowers.
Mother of heroes! girt about with thy true-hearted band!—
Roused by the kiss of Freedom, thou hast burst thy spell of sleep;
For o'er the ruins bound the feet of a new and nobler Rome.
O'er the fountain of the glorious past a morning radiance flits,
By the brink of its still waters a living spirit sits;
No more the death-wind stirs it with echoes from the tombs:
For a mighty hand has rolled away the stone from off its brink,
And living beings come once more of its quickening waves to drink;
Go forth with tempered courage to the ancient field of strife;—
Nor the jar of vain polemics and the clang of hollow words;
Where on the widest battle-field the oldest fight is fought;
Meeting ignorance with patience and tyranny with light,
And wrong and falsehood with the force of wisdom and of right.
That the tyrant and the scoffer may learn with shame from thee
That Freedom is no empty boast, no prate for boys at school,
No ladder by which those who serve may climb on high to rule;
Freedom to utter truth, do good, and help the wronged to right;
And they who still pine hopelessly in paralyzing thrall
May learn of thee how well 'tis worth to venture all for all.
Songs Old and New | ||