And in church and palace and judgment-hall He saw his image high over all.
But still, wherever his steps they led, The Lord in sorrow bent down his head, And from under the heavy foundation-stones The Son of Mary heard bitter groans.
And in church and palace and judgment-hall He marked great fissures that rent the wall, And opened wider and yet more wide
As the living foundation heaved and sighed.
"Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, On the bodies and souls of living men? And think ye that building shall endure Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?
"With gates of silver and bars of gold
Ye have fenced my sheep from their Father's fold: I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven, these eighteen-hundred years."
"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all our land.
"Our task is hard,—with sword and flame To hold thy earth for ever the same, And with sharp crooks of steel to keep Still, as thou leftest them, thy sheep."
Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin Pushed from her faintly want and sin.
These set he in the midst of them; And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, "Lo here," said he, "The images ye have made of me!"
WE too have autumns, when our leaves Drop loosely through the dampened air, When all our good seems bound in sheaves, And we stand reaped and bare.
Our seasons have no fixed returns, Without our will they come and go; At noon our sudden summer burns, Ere sunset all is snow.
But each day brings less summer cheer, Crimps more our ineffectual spring, And something earlier every year Our singing birds take wing.
As less the olden glow abides,
And less the chillier heart aspires,
With drift-wood beached in past spring-tides We light our sullen fires.
By the pinched rushlight's starving beam We cower and strain our wasted sight, To stitch youth's shroud up, seam by seam, In the long arctic night.
It was not so-we once were young- When Spring, to womanly Summer turning, Her dew-drops on each grass-blade strung, In the red sunrise burning.
We trusted then, aspired, believed
That earth could be remade to-morrow;
Ah why be ever undeceived?
Why give up faith for sorrow?
O thou whose days are yet all spring,
Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving;
Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.
BOWING thyself in dust before a Book, And thinking the great God is thine alone, O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook
What gods the heathen carves in wood and stone; As if the Shepherd who from outer cold Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure fold Were careful for the fashion of his crook.
There is no broken reed so poor and base, No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, But he therewith the ravening wolf can chase, And guide his flock to springs and pastures new; Through ways unlooked for, and through many lands,
Far from the rich folds built with human hands, The gracious footprints of his love I trace.
And what art thou, own brother of the clod, That from his hand the crook wouldst snatch away, And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, To scare the sheep out of the wholesome day? Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted Jew, That with thy idol-volume's covers two Wouldst make a jail to coop the living God? Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ-strains By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew brains Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's thought; Nor shall thy lips be touched with living fire, Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole desire To weld anew the spirit's broken chains.
God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
There towers the mountain of the Voice no less, Which whoso seeks shall find; but he who bends, Intent on manna still and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore.
Slowly the Bible of the race is writ,
And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of cloud, Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit.
THROUGH suffering and sorrow thou hast passed To show us what a woman true may be. They have not taken sympathy from thee, Nor made thee any other than thou wast; Save as some tree which, in a sudden blast, Sheddeth those blossoms that are weakly grown Upon the air, but keepeth every one
Whose strength gives warrant of good fruit at last, So thou hast shed some blooms of gaiety, But never one of steadfast cheerfulness; Nor hath thy knowledge of adversity Robbed thee of any faith in happiness, But rather cleared thine inner eyes to see How many simple ways there are to bless.
OUR love is not a fading earthly flower: Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise, And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, Doth momently to fresher beauty rise.
To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green: Our summer hearts make summer's fulness where No leaf or bud or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,-whose forgetfulness is beauty's death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth,
And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.
THEY pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Dim ghosts of men, that hover to and fro,
Hugging their bodies round them, like thin shrouds Wherein their souls were buried long ago:
They trampled on their youth, and faith, and love, They cast their hope of human-kind away, With Heaven's clear messages they madly strove, And conquered,—and their spirits turned to clay. Lo! how they wander round the world, their grave, Whose ever-gaping maw by such is fed, Gibbering at living men, and idly rave, "We, only, truly live, but ye are dead." Alas! poor fools, the anointed eye may trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face!
I THOUGHT Our love at full, but I did err; Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see That Sorrow in our happy world must be Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter. But, as a mother feels her child first stir Under her heart, so felt I instantly Deep in my soul another bond to thee Thrill with that life we saw depart from her. O mother of our angel-child! twice dear! Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, Her tender radiance shall enfold us here; Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, Threads the void glooms of space without a fear, To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.
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