 | Lazarus And other Poems |  |
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.
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,
95
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
96
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.
| Lazarus And other Poems | |