Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
Let God do his work, we will see to
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of Bring in the candles.' And they brought
THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL
WHAT flecks the outer gray beyond
The sundown's golden trail? The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, Or gleam of slanting sail?
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, And sea-worn elders pray, The ghost of what was once a ship Is sailing up the bay!
From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain, The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, O hundred-harbored Maine ! But many a keel shall seaward turn,
And many a sail outstand,
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms Against the dusk of land.
She rounds the headland's bristling pines; She threads the isle-set bay;
THE elder folks shook hands at last, Down seat by seat the signal passed. To simple ways like ours unused, Half solemnized and half amused, With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest
His sense of glad relief expressed. Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; The cattle in the meadow-run Stood half-leg deep; a single bird The green repose above us stirred. 'What part or lot have you,' he said, In these dull rites of drowsy-head? Is silence worship? Seek it where It soothes with dreams the summer air, Not in this close and rude-benched hall,
'Thy words are well, O friend,' I said; Unmeasured and unlimited, With noiseless slide of stone to stone, The mystic Church of God has grown. Invisible and silent stands
The temple never made with hands, Unheard the voices still and small Of its unseen confessional.
He needs no special place of prayer Whose hearing ear is everywhere; He brings not back the childish days That ringed the earth with stones of praise, Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid The plinths of Philæ's colonnade. Still less He owns the selfish good And sickly growth of solitude,
The worthless grace that, out of sight, Flowers in the desert anchorite; Dissevered from the suffering whole, Love hath no power to save a soul. Not out of Self, the origin And native air and soil of sin, The living waters spring and flow, The trees with leaves of healing grow.
'Dream not, O friend, because I seek This quiet shelter twice a week, I better deem its pine-laid floor Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore; But nature is not solitude:
She crowds us with her thronging wood;
Her many hands reach out to us, Her many tongues are garrulous; Perpetual riddles of surprise She offers to our ears and eyes; She will not leave our senses still, But drags them captive at her will: And, making earth too great for heaven, She hides the Giver in the given.
"And so I find it well to come For deeper rest to this still room, For here the habit of the soul Feels less the outer world's control; The strength of mutual purpose pleads More earnestly our common needs; And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on either side, The world that time and sense have known Falls off and leaves us God alone.
'Yet rarely through the charmed repose Unmixed the stream of motive flows, A flavor of its many springs, The tints of earth and sky it brings; In the still waters needs must be Some shade of human sympathy; And here, in its accustomed place, I look on memory's dearest face; The blind by-sitter guesseth not What shadow haunts that vacant spot; No eyes save mine alone can see The love wherewith it welcomes me! And still, with those alone my kin, In doubt and weakness, want and sin, I bow my head, my heart I bare, As when that face was living there, And strive (too oft, alas! in vain) The peace of simple trust to gain, Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay The idols of my heart away.
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