University of Virginia Library

GOMER.

Oh, sorrow of all sorrows! death of deaths!
The springs of blessing poisoned at their source!
The shadows falling ere the day is done!
I watch the ghastly ruins of my life,
The shattered columns of a vanished joy,
And through them wanders every beast unclean,
And o'er them sweeps the moaning of the blast;
And in my woe I travel o'er again
The strange, drear path that leaves me here alone,
Bowed down in shame, dishonoured, reft of all,
And haunted by the memory of past joys.
Far other was I, when in youth's first dawn
I wandered joyous o'er Samaria's hills,
Life's golden hopes before me. I was clean
From all pollution of the sense or soul;
I never bowed the knee at Moloch's shrine,
Nor joined in dance to queenly Ashtaroth,
Nor with the black-robed company of priests
Sang praise to Baal in Zidonian fanes:
True to my fathers' fame I kept their faith,
And cleaving to the prophets of our land,
The few bright stars that shone in murkiest night,
Became as one of them. We lived in peace
Where Jordan's windings glad the palm-girt plain;
Loud-swelling anthems sang the praise of God,
Our full-toned voices thundered out the words
That Moses heard on Sinai from the Lord;
And oft at eve our grey-haired seers would tell
Of those two mightiest prophets, Israel's pride,
Chariots and horsemen, strong to save or slay,
The Tishbite, and the peasant, Shaphat's son,
From fair Meholah. And the months passed on;
We sowed and reaped, we planted and we built,
Working and praying, till the toil became
Itself a worship. Words of mystic power
Came from my lips, when o'er me poured the flood
Of surging sound, the rushing, mighty wind
Sweeping the chords of life, and stirring thoughts
That must find utterance. And I dreamt my dream
Of honoured age, the crown of honoured life;
I saw myself, my white hairs flowing down,
The snowy mantle reaching to my feet,
And round me gathered all the prophet-band
That owned me as their master; and I stood,
The head and leader of their glorious praise,
As Samuel stood of old.
And now I sit,
All lonely, homeless, weary of my life,
Thick darkness round me, and the stars all dumb,
That chanted erst their wondrous tale of joy.
And thou hast done it all, O faithless one!
O Gomer! whom I loved as never wife
Was loved in Israel, all the wrong is thine!
Thy hand hath spoilèd all my tender vines,
Thy foot hath trampled all my pleasant fruits,
Thy sin hath laid my honour in the dust.
Men throw the blame on me, they mock my grief;
They wondered at my choice, and whispered words—
“The prophet woo the harlot!”—told their scorn.
They saw in me the poor, weak victim-fool
Of beauty's power to bow the strongest will,
To taint the purest, drive the wisest mad.
Yet call I God to witness, not from pulse
Of sensuous passion thrilling through the veins,
Or love of outward beauty, sought I thee,
And won thee as my bride. Nor charge I thee
With feignèd semblance of a blameless life,
The eyes cast down, and veilèd cheeks that flush,
When looks admiring tell their power to charm.
Not blinded or deceived I made my choice;
I knew thy alien blood, thy wanton heart:
I saw the morning of thy youth defiled;
I watched thee, when the summer sun went down,
And in the purple gleamed the silvery moon
Walking in brightness, join the priestess-throng
In mystic dance, thy timbrel in thy hand,
Thy bright eyes flashing fire, thy streaming hair
O'er neck and bosom falling, all thy soul
Bound by the wild enchantment; and I knew
What followed on the revel, and for grief
And shame I wept. “So fallen, yet so young!
So fair and bright! so stained, polluted, vile!”
And sorrow passed to pity, pity grew
To yearning love. To seek and save the lost,
To call thee mine, and bring thee back to God,
Became the master-passion of my heart,
Forgetful of my calling and my fame:
And never in the hour when rushing streams
Of light from Heaven have flooded all my soul,
Or clear, low whispers from the Eternal Word
Have pointed out my path, have I believed
More firmly that my will was one with God's,
His oracle my one unerring guide,
Than in that hour when all my heart was thine.
The children grew; they smiled their infant smiles;
They lisped with prattling whispers, and they called
Me “father;” and my heart was bowed with woe.
At eve I sat, and watched them as they slept,
With gentler thoughts. “Plead with your mother, plead,
O children! whom I cherish as mine own;
I change your names, and cancel all the curse
Which shut you out from love. Oh, let your voice
Break through the spell that holds her in its chains;
Your baby-fingers touch her hardened heart,
Win back her wandering fancy, make her true,
And pure, and faithful. So a happier glow
May yet surround the sunset of my life;
And age may come to find me circled round
With loving wife, dear children, honouring friends.
Far better ending than my youth's vain dreams,
Far nobler blessing than the crown of praise
Which waits for him who leads the white-robed choir.”
It might not be. To depths of lower shame
She sank all heedless. In her frenzied guilt,
Leaving the one true guardian of her life,
She sought another's home. With him she dwelt,
In guilty snatches of delirious joy,
Drowning in sin all memory of the past,
Bewitched by evil, till the flame burnt out,
As burn the thorns that sparkle on the hearth,
And left her cold and shivering in the gloom.
The adulterer's love, grown weary, turned to hate,
And bitter words made way for brutal deed;
And dragging her, once fondled and caressed,
As men may drag a slave they take in war,
Before the men who gather in the gate,
He offered her for money, less for greed
Of gold or silver, than in scorn and hate,
To grieve her woman's soul with foulest shame,
The lowest price demanding that men ask
For boy half-grown, or woman past her prime,
Half money, half in kind; and none would buy.
But I was there, and, weeping blinding tears,
I took her to myself, and paid the price
(Strange contrast to the dowry of her youth
When first I wooed her); and she came again
To dwell beneath my roof. Yet not for me
The tender hopes of those departed years
And not for her the freedom and the love
I then bestowed so freely. Sterner rule
Is needed now: in silence and alone,
In shame and sorrow, wailing, fast, and prayer,
She must blot out the stains that made her life
One long pollution. I, too, must abide
The issue of that penance, suffering long,
Her friend, yet not her husband, till the work
Be done, and all the wanton soul and sense
Be chastened into pureness. And as yet
The tears come not, but sullen, angry frown,
And fear that turns to hate, rejecting love,
And misery that crushes out the hope,
Each evil passion rushing through the soul,
And making life a hell. Ah me! my God!
Why was I born to taste this depth of woe?
Why closed not darkness o'er my infant life
On that accursèd day when joyful lips,
Unknowing of the future, raised the cry,
“Rejoice, O mother! Lo! a child is born”?
And yet through all the mystery of my years
There runs a purpose which forbids that wail
Of passionate despair. I have not lived
At random, as a soul whom God forsakes;
But evermore His Spirit led me on,
Prompted each purpose, taught my lips to speak,
Stirred up within me that deep love, and now
Reveals the inner secret. I have learnt,
Poor, weak, and frail, to love the fallen soul
Of one thus worthless. I have given my peace,
My honour, yea, my life for her who turns
Unthankful from me. Is there not a cause?
Hath not our God wooed Israel as His bride,
The stubborn, wayward Israel, in His love
And pity, pardoning all the sins of old?
And here, too, all is baseness. Crimes of sense,
And crimes of spirit, tainting heart and life,
The altars, and the incense, and the songs
With which she bowed to Baalim; the lust,
The rapine, and the hate that rose to heaven:
These, these have lit the fire of righteous wrath;
And He, the jealous God, will visit sins
Of fathers upon children. I have learnt,
In this sharp teaching of an inward woe,
The meaning of that jealousy. I know
The pity, and the sorrow, and the pain,
The love which waters cannot quench, the zeal
Which does not shrink from chastening. So it is,
And equal stripes must fall on equal sin.
She sits alone, that poor self-widowed one,
Bowed down to earth. No golden circlet now
Crowns her dark locks. No Tyrian purple pours
Its rich, soft folds around the marble limbs;
No pearls or rubies glow on either arm;
The topaz and the sapphire cease to blend
Their radiance on the anklet's dainty band,
The coronet of feet that scorned for pride
The earth they trod on. Reft of pomp and state,
Her brow deep-furrowed with a wrath suppressed,
And lips that tell of sullen, inward storm,
She bides her time; and I must leave her there
Till those dark clouds have melted into tears,
And heart of stone gives way to heart of flesh.
The time is long and weary, and I sigh
For very grief as mournful days pass on;
And yet no sorrow, no repentant prayer,
No craving for forgiveness speaks of change.
And thou, O Israel, thou must bear thy doom,
Grow old and fail, in homes that are not thine,
Where mighty rivers water lands unknown,
And Asshur's palaces, in pride of strength,
Rise high upon the banks of Hiddekel.
No glory of the past shall wait thee there,
No pomp of kings, no priests in gorgeous robes,
No victims bleeding on the altar-fires;
Nor shall the ephod set with sparkling gems,
Nor pillar speaking of the gate of heaven,
Nor Teraphim with strange mysterious gleams,
Give then their signs oracular. Long years
Thy sons shall hang their harps on Babel's trees,
And wander homeless over all the lands,
A by-word to the nations, till at last
The door of hope is opened, and the light
Breaks in on that thick darkness. But the end
Is certain. They will turn and seek their God,
Seek David's son, the heir of David's throne,
No longer hardened in their scorn of scorn,
But mourning, weeping, seeking peace from God,
Renewing once again the primal love,
The day of those espousals when the King
Chose his young bride from out the desert world,
And claimed her as His own. Oh, boundless joy!
Oh, day long looked for! worth the price we pay,
The penalty of exile, hunger, shame,
If only it may come in all its peace,
In brightness as the morning.
So I sit,
Feeding on thoughts that circle round from grief,
To highest gladness: so I judge their faults,
Mark out their sentence, that adulterous wife,
That more adulterous people. Yet there comes,
To bring me low, the question, “What am I,
That I should sit in judgment? This my woe,
That rends the air with passionate complaint,
Bears that no witness of a guilt like theirs,
A penalty as needful?” Through my soul
There thrills the trembling shame that whelms the heart
Of woman faithless. Thou, my soul, wast loved,
As bride by bridegroom, by the Eternal Lord;
And thou, too, hast been false. Thy will has turned
To dreams of self. Thy work beguiled thy soul
With wanton longings for the prophet's fame,
The power to move the terror or the love
Of listening thousands. Not the word of peace,
The free glad tidings from the Lord of Life
To thousand way-worn wanderers in their grief,
But battle, strife, contention, with the kings,
The priests, the prophets, who opposed thy will,—
This led thee on. The heart of all thy love
To that poor sinner was thy pride of strength,
Secret of all thy failure. Thou hast said,
“I in my might will be as God, and bring
Good out of evil, sway the tides of life,
Avenge the wrong, chastise each secret sin;”
And so thou could'st not win thy heart's desire,
Wast powerless through thy dream of fancied strength,
Wast baffled by an evil like thine own:
Thou too must sit in ashes; on thy lips
Must be the seal of silence. Thou must learn
Thy guilt in its full measure; thou must own
Thy need of cleansing. Only when thine arm
In sense of weakness reaches forth to God,
Wilt thou be strong to suffer and to do;
Only when thou shalt yield thy will to His,
Renouncing self's vain dreams, and take thy place
Among the lowest, shall thy power return
To speak His word, to bow men's hearts to Him.
Till then sit thou without the prophet's garb,
And utter thou no oracle of God;
Low on the earth, in dust and ashes bowed,
Learn from the outcast, count thyself as vile,
Taste in thine heart the bitterness of death,
Plunge thy whole life within the dark abyss,
And then thou too shalt, after many days,
Turn in thine anguish to the Eternal Lord,
And, wearied out with evil, seeking peace,
Dwell in His Goodness everlastingly.