 | The soul's legend |  |
A PRAYER.
St. Vincent de Paul at the close of his usual petitions was accustomed to offer up an especial prayer for the benefit of the soul in Purgatory, “that was the most forgotten one among all there.”
[PART I.]
(The souls beloved), what need to pray?
For love can still interpret best
What best it knoweth how to say.
(The souls who love), what need to pray?
Content they pass from grace to grace,
And speed to glory through delay.
(The souls who grieve), what need to pray?
No joy they miss; the tear is sweet
As is the kiss, they need but stay.
Swift sworded souls that cleave their way
To God through unexampled woes;
It rests with them for us to pray.
Ye souls and spirits of the blest!
I ask not if ye speed or wait;
I know ye love, and are at rest.
Of bliss ye seize at once, or lie
Long ages, shut from grief and toil,
In unexpanded ecstasy.
A deeper gulf upon me cries;
A weight of souls for whom I plead
The one availing sacrifice.
Enwraps in its thick, shrouded pall;
By none beloved, forgot by all.
Once groaned beneath its sternest ban;
By sorer fetters galled and vexed
Than any man hath forged for man:
Who lived unblest, who died unshriven;
Harsh spirits, ill-agreed with life,
At war with man, with self, with heaven.
Fierce Esau's children, desert-bred;
Dark dwellers in the jungle thorn,
That while they wounded, inly bled.
For these, where'er their lot be cast,
My soul, in their extremest need,
Would say, “I go unto these last.”
Or blighted by earth's deadly sin,
They failed from any human heart
Its meed of love and prayer to win;
No clasp, no pressure warm and fond;
If love, that seems its way to miss
On earth, may find its way beyond,
They have not broken yet with all:
For them is one strong prayer to rise,
For them is one warm tear to fall;
That tracks them, not to aid or free;
Content to be with captives bound,
Till captive sinks captivity!
I. PART II.
And hear a vast, unmeasured chime,
That breaks in dread monotony
Of woe alternating with crime;
Of waves, winds, wrecks together hurled,
Loud smitten hands, fierce tongues perplexed,
The loss and outcry of a World,
Adown long ages in despair,
Of one who saith, “My punishment
Is more than I can bear.”
Who spake the earliest, “I have slain
A young man to my grievous wrong,
A man to mine own pain.”
Of God, and by his heart deceived,
Who darkly strove and erred, yet loved
Him best, whom most he grieved;
Found false, and to love's dearest lord
A traitor, could not live to end
His own life, self-abhorred;
Responses of the beaten surf;
Yet now another sound I hear
Of water flowing over turf;
It seems, because the rocks are high,
The streamlet slender, and profound
The vale that shuts it from the sky;
I hear it running from the hill;
And o'er its stony bed delayed
It chafeth, yet it runneth still.
It feeds not on the dews nor rain;
It springs beneath the House of God,
Of the existence of a large supply of water under the Temple there can be no question. While it was yet standing, mention is made by Tacitus of a fountain of ever-flowing water under the Temple, fons perennis acquæ, as well as pools and cisterns for preserving rain-water. Aristeas and Josephus add, “In order to cleanse away the blood from the victims, of water there is an unfailing supply; a copious and natural fountain within, gushing over, and there being, moreover, wonderful underground receptacles in a circuit of five furlongs in the substructure of the Temple, and each of these having numerous pipes, the several streams intercommunicating.” Josephus also relates that more than half a mile from the city he was told to stoop down, and heard the sound of gushing waters underground. The natural fountain then beneath the Temple was doubtless augmented by waters brought from a distance, as required for the “divers appointed washings” in the priestly services. Pools near the Temple are mentioned by writers of the third and fourth centuries; and Omar, on the surrender of Jerusalem, a. d. 634, was guided to the site of the ancient Temple (whereon he built his mosque) by the stream of water which issued through a water-channel from it. Whencesoever this water was derived, it afforded Jerusalem an abundant supply of water. Much as Jerusalem suffered in sieges by famine, and its besiegers by thirst, thirst was never any part of the sufferings of those within. The superfluous water was and still is carried off underground to what is now “the fountain of the Virgin,” and thence again through the rock to the pool of Siloam. Thence it carried fertility to the gardens of Siloam, in Joel's time doubtless “the King's gardens;” still, a modern traveller in the East tells us, “a verdant spot, refreshing to the eye in the heat of summer, while all around is parched and dun.” The blood of the victims flowed into the same brook, Kedron, and was a known source of fertility before the land was given to desolation. The waters of Kedron, as well as all the waters of Palestine, must have been more abundant formerly. Isaiah speaks of it as “flowing softly;” Josephus, of the “abundant fountain;” an official report, of the “fountain gushing forth with abundance of water.” Still, its fertilising powers formed but one little oasis, where all around was arid. It fertilised those gardens five miles from the city, but the mid space was waterless, thirsty, mournful. Lower down, the rivulet threaded its way to the Dead Sea through a narrow ravine which became more and more wild, where St. Saba planted his monastery. “A howling wilderness, stern desolation, stupendous perpendicular cliffs, terrific chasms, oppressive solitude,” are the terms by which one endeavours to characterise “the heart of this stern desert of Judæa.” Such continues to be its character in the remaining half of its course, until it is lost in the Dead Sea, and is transmuted into its saltness. Its valley bears the name of desolation—Wady en Nar, “Valley of Fire.” No human path lies along it. The Kedron flows along a deep and almost impenetrable ravine, “in a narrow channel between perpendicular walls of rock, as if worn away by the rushing waters between those desolate chalky hills.” That little oasis of verdure was fit emblem of the Jewish people, itself bedewed by the stream which issued from the Temple of God, but, like Gideon's fleece, leaving all around dry. It made no sensible impression out of or beyond itself. But hereafter, the stream, the Siloah whose streamlets—i.e., the artificial fertilising divisions—made glad the city of God, should make the wildest, driest spots of our mortality, like the garden of the Lord. The parched earth should shoot up fresh with life; what was by nature barren and unfruitful should bring forth good fruit; places heretofore stained by sin should be purified; nature should be renewed by grace; and this should be beyond the borders of the promised land, even in that world which they had left behind when Joshua brought them in thither. Fresher than the gladliest freshness of nature, brighter than its most kindled glow, is the renewing freshness of grace, and this issuing from Mount Zion was to be the portion, not of Judæa only, but of the world.”
The same writer, commenting on the 3rd of Joel, adds: “After the destruction of Antichrist there will, it seems, be still a period of probation in which the grace of God will abound and extend more and more widely. The Prophet Zechariah, who continues the image of the living waters going out from Jerusalem, places this gift after God had gathered all nations against Jerusalem, and had visibly and miraculously overthrown them.”—See “Pusey's Commentary on the Minor Prophets.”
And broadens as it nears the plain.
With trees the desert knows and needs;
See Ezekiel xlvii. 12; also the Prophecy of Joel, commenting on the 3rd chapter of which, verse 18, “A fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the Valley of Shittim” (or of Acacia trees), St. Jerome says: “The Shittim tree, or Eastern Acacia (i.e., the Sant or Sandal wood), is a tree which grows in the desert, like a whitethorn in its leaves and colour, but not in its size, which is such that large planks are cut out of it. The wood is very strong, and of incredible lightness and beauty. These trees do not grow in cultivated places, or in the Roman soil, only in the desert of Arabia.”
Dr. Tristram writes of it as “a gnarled and thorny tree, like a hawthorn in its habit and manner of growth, but much larger, which flourishes best in the driest situations, and is scattered more or less numerously over the whole of the Sinaitic Peninsula;” and adds, that “it is also abundant in the many ravines which open on the Dead Sea at Engedi, and all along its western shores. It flourishes most in the dry beds of extinct water-courses, as at the south-west end of the Dead Sea, and where no other tree can find moisture.” The wood of this tree does not decay, and when old becomes like ebony. Of it the ark of God was made—its staves, the table of shewbread, the tabernacle and its pillars, the altar for burnt offerings and of incense. It seems difficult to determine the precise site of the Valley of Shittim, or of Acacia trees. Dr. Pusey inclines to place it on the hither side of Jordan, seven miles and a half beyond the Dead Sea, and connects it with the Plains of Acacias (the rich and sultry plains of Moab, the last camping-place or station of Israel before entering the Land of Promise). Hence Joshua sent the spies; here Balaam prophesied of the Star that should arise out of Israel, even Jesus Christ. This, too, was the place where Israel sinned in Baal Peor, and where Phineas turned aside the displeasure of God.
And as its margin grows more wide,
With many rushes, many reeds:
The rush, the chosen emblem of simplicity, humility, and patience; so used by Dante. See “Purgatorio,” Canto 1st:
See that thou duly gird him, and his face
Lave, till all sordid stain thou wipe from thence.
This islet all around, there far beneath
Where the wave beats it, on the oozy bed,
Produces store of reeds—no other plant
Lives there. . . . . .
. . Then on the solitary shore arrived,
That never sailing on its waters saw
Man that could after measure back his course,
He girt me in such manner as had pleased
Him who instructed; and oh! strange to tell!
As he selected every humble plant,
Wherever one was plucked, another there
Resembling, straightway in its place arose.”
Cary's Dante.
I see this river seawards steal,
Its waters spread, its waters grow,
And wheresoe'er they come, they heal.
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