iv.
A bending staff I would not break, A feeble faith I would not shake, Nor even rashly pluck away The error which some truth may stay, Whose loss might leave the soul without A shield against the shafts of doubt.
And yet, at times, when over all A darker mystery seems to fall, (May God forgive the child of dust, Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!) I raise the questions, old and dark, Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch, And, speech-confounded, build again The baffled tower of Shinar's plain.
I am: how little more I know! Whence came I?
Whither do I go?
A centred self, which feels and is; A cry between the silences; A shadow-birth of clouds at strife With sunshine on the hills of life; A shaft from Nature's quiver cast Into the Future from the Past; Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud.
Thorough the vastness, arching all, I see the great stars rise and fall, The rounding seasons come and go, The tided oceans ebb and flow; The tokens of a central force, Whose circles, in their widening course, O'erlap and move the universe; The workings of the law whence springs The rhythmic harmony of things, Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, And orbs in heaven the morning star.
Of all I see, in earth and sky,-- Star, flower, beast, bird,--what part have I?
This conscious life,--is it the same Which thrills the universal frame, Whereby the caverned crystal shoots, And mounts the sap from forest roots, Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells When Spring makes green her native dells?
How feels the stone the pang of birth, Which brings its sparkling prism forth?
The forest-tree the throb which gives The life-blood to its new-born leaves?
Do bird and blossom feel, like me, Life's many-folded mystery,-- The wonder which it is to be?
Or stand I severed and distinct, From Nature's "chain of life" unlinked?
Allied to all, yet not the less Prisoned in separate consciousness, Alone o'erburdened with a sense Of life, and cause, and consequence?
In vain to me the Sphinx propounds The riddle of her sights and sounds; Back still the vaulted mystery gives The echoed question it receives.
What sings the brook?
What oracle Is in the pine-tree's organ swell?
What may the wind's low burden be?
The meaning of the moaning sea?
The hieroglyphics of the stars?
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars?
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill The trick of Nature's cipher still.
I turn from Nature unto men, I ask the stylus and the pen; What sang the bards of old?
What meant The prophets of the Orient?
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid In painted tomb and pyramid?
What mean Idumea's arrowy lines, Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs?
How speaks the primal thought of man From the grim carvings of Copan?
Where rests the secret?
Where the keys Of the old death-bolted mysteries?
Alas! the dead retain their trust; Dust hath no answer from the dust.
The great enigma still unguessed, Unanswered the eternal quest; I gather up the scattered rays Of wisdom in the early days, Faint gleams and broken, like the light Of meteors in a northern night, Betraying to the darkling earth The unseen sun which gave them birth; I listen to the sibyl's chant, The voice of priest and hierophant; I know what Indian Kreeshna saith, And what of life and what of death The demon taught to Socrates; And what, beneath his garden-trees Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,-- The solemn-thoughted Plato said; Nor lack I tokens, great or small, Of God's clear light in each and all, While holding with more dear regard The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard, The starry pages promise-lit With Christ's Evangel over-writ, Thy miracle of life and death, O Holy One of Nazareth! On Aztec ruins, gray and lone, The circling serpent coils in stone,-- Type of the endless and unknown; Whereof we seek the clue to find, With groping fingers of the blind! Forever sought, and never found, We trace that serpent-symbol round Our resting-place, our starting bound Oh, thriftlessness of dream and guess! Oh, wisdom which is foolishness! Why idly seek from outward things The answer inward silence brings?
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere And age, for that which lies so near?
Why climb the far-off hills with pain, A nearer view of heaven to gain?
In lowliest depths of bosky dells The hermit Contemplation dwells.
A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat, And lotus-twined his silent feet, Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight, He sees at noon the stars, whose light Shall glorify the coining night.
Here let me pause, my quest forego; Enough for me to feel and know That He in whom the cause and end, The past and future, meet and blend,-- Who, girt with his Immensities, Our vast and star-hung system sees, Small as the clustered Pleiades,-- Moves not alone the heavenly quires, But waves the spring-time's grassy spires, Guards not archangel feet alone, But deigns to guide and keep my own; Speaks not alone the words of fate Which worlds destroy, and worlds create, But whispers in my spirit's ear, In tones of love, or warning fear, A language none beside may hear.
To Him, from wanderings long and wild, I come, an over-wearied child, In cool and shade His peace to find, Lice dew-fall settling on my mind.
Assured that all I know is best, And humbly trusting for the rest, I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme, Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream Of power, impersonal and cold, Controlling all, itself controlled, Maker and slave of iron laws, Alike the subject and the cause; From vain philosophies, that try The sevenfold gates of mystery, And, baffled ever, babble still, Word-prodigal of fate and will; From Nature, and her mockery, Art; And book and speech of men apart, To the still witness in my heart; With reverence waiting to behold His Avatar of love untold, The Eternal Beauty new and old! 1862.
FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS.
In calm and cool and silence, once again I find my old accustomed place among My brethren, where, perchance, no human tongue Shall utter words; where never hymn is sung, Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer swung, Nor dim light falling through the pictured pane! There, syllabled by silence, let me hear The still small voice which reached the prophet's ear; Read in my heart a still diviner law Than Israel's leader on his tables saw! There let me strive with each besetting sin, Recall my wandering fancies, and restrain The sore disquiet of a restless brain; And, as the path of duty is made plain, May grace be given that I may walk therein, Not like the hireling, for his selfish gain, With backward glances and reluctant tread, Making a merit of his coward dread, But, cheerful, in the light around me thrown, Walking as one to pleasant service led; Doing God's will as if it were my own, Yet trusting not in mine, but in His strength alone! 1852.
TRUST.
The same old baffling questions! O my friend, I cannot answer them.

In vain I send My soul into the dark, where never burn The lamps of science, nor the natural light Of Reason's sun and stars! I cannot learn Their great and solemn meanings, nor discern The awful secrets of the eyes which turn Evermore on us through the day and night With silent challenge and a dumb demand, Proffering the riddles of the dread unknown, Like the calm Sphinxes, with their eyes of stone, Questioning the centuries from their veils of sand! I have no answer for myself or thee, Save that I learned beside my mother's knee; "All is of God that is, and is to be; And God is good." Let this suffice us still, Resting in childlike trust upon His will Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.
1853.
TRINITAS.
At morn I prayed, "I fain would see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me." I wandered forth, the sun and air I saw bestowed with equal care On good and evil, foul and fair.
No partial favor dropped the rain; Alike the righteous and profane Rejoiced above their heading grain.
And my heart murmured, "Is it meet That blindfold Nature thus should treat With equal hand the tares and wheat ?" A presence melted through my mood,-- A warmth, a light, a sense of good, Like sunshine through a winter wood.
I saw that presence, mailed complete In her white innocence, pause to greet A fallen sister of the street.
Upon her bosom snowy pure The lost one clung, as if secure From inward guilt or outward lure.
"Beware!" I said; "in this I see No gain to her, but loss to thee Who touches pitch defiled must be." I passed the haunts of shame and sin, And a voice whispered, "Who therein Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace win?
"Who there shall hope and health dispense, And lift the ladder up from thence Whose rounds are prayers of penitence ?" I said, "No higher life they know; These earth-worms love to have it so.
Who stoops to raise them sinks as low." That night with painful care I read What Hippo's saint and Calvin said; The living seeking to the dead! In vain I turned, in weary quest, Old pages, where (God give them rest!) The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed.
And still I prayed, "Lord, let me see How Three are One, and One is Three; Read the dark riddle unto me!" Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray For what thou hast?
This very day The Holy Three have crossed thy way.
"Did not the gifts of sun and air To good and ill alike declare The all-compassionate Father's care?
"In the white soul that stooped to raise The lost one from her evil ways, Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise! "A bodiless Divinity, The still small Voice that spake to thee Was the Holy Spirit's mystery! "O blind of sight, of faith how small! Father, and Son, and Holy Call This day thou hast denied them all! "Revealed in love and sacrifice, The Holiest passed before thine eyes, One and the same, in threefold guise.
"The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done, His Voice in thy soul;--and the Three are One!" I shut my grave Aquinas fast; The monkish gloss of ages past, The schoolman's creed aside I cast.
And my heart answered, "Lord, I see How Three are One, and One is Three; Thy riddle hath been read to me!" 1858.
THE SISTERS A PICTURE BY BARRY The shade for me, but over thee The lingering sunshine still; As, smiling, to the silent stream Comes down the singing rill.
So come to me, my little one,-- My years with thee I share, And mingle with a sister's love A mother's tender care.
But keep the smile upon thy lip, The trust upon thy brow; Since for the dear one God hath called We have an angel now.
Our mother from the fields of heaven Shall still her ear incline; Nor need we fear her human love Is less for love divine.
The songs are sweet they sing beneath The trees of life so fair, But sweetest of the songs of heaven Shall be her children's prayer.
Then, darling, rest upon my breast, And teach my heart to lean With thy sweet trust upon the arm Which folds us both unseen! 1858 "THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR.
Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps, Her stones of emptiness remain; Around her sculptured mystery sweeps The lonely waste of Edom's plain.
From the doomed dwellers in the cleft The bow of vengeance turns not back; Of all her myriads none are left Along the Wady Mousa's track.
Clear in the hot Arabian day Her arches spring, her statues climb; Unchanged, the graven wonders pay No tribute to the spoiler, Time! Unchanged the awful lithograph Of power and glory undertrod; Of nations scattered like the chaff Blown from the threshing-floor of God.
Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn From Petra's gates with deeper awe, To mark afar the burial urn Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor; And where upon its ancient guard Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,-- Looks from its turrets desertward, And keeps the watch that God has set.
The same as when in thunders loud It heard the voice of God to man, As when it saw in fire and cloud The angels walk in Israel's van, Or when from Ezion-Geber's way It saw the long procession file, And heard the Hebrew timbrels play The music of the lordly Nile; Or saw the tabernacle pause, Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's wells, While Moses graved the sacred laws, And Aaron swung his golden bells.
Rock of the desert, prophet-sung! How grew its shadowing pile at length, A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue, Of God's eternal love and strength.
On lip of bard and scroll of seer, From age to age went down the name, Until the Shiloh's promised year, And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came! The path of life we walk to-day Is strange as that the Hebrews trod; We need the shadowing rock, as they,-- We need, like them, the guides of God.
God send His angels, Cloud and Fire, To lead us o'er the desert sand! God give our hearts their long desire, His shadow in a weary land! 1859.
THE OVER-HEART.
"For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever! "-- PAUL.
Above, below, in sky and sod, In leaf and spar, in star and man, Well might the wise Athenian scan The geometric signs of God, The measured order of His plan.
And India's mystics sang aright Of the One Life pervading all,-- One Being's tidal rise and fall In soul and form, in sound and sight,-- Eternal outflow and recall.
God is: and man in guilt and fear The central fact of Nature owns; Kneels, trembling, by his altar-stones, And darkly dreams the ghastly smear Of blood appeases and atones.
Guilt shapes the Terror: deep within The human heart the secret lies Of all the hideous deities; And, painted on a ground of sin, The fabled gods of torment rise! And what is He?
The ripe grain nods, The sweet dews fall, the sweet flowers blow; But darker signs His presence show The earthquake and the storm are God's, And good and evil interflow.
O hearts of love! O souls that turn Like sunflowers to the pure and best! To you the truth is manifest: For they the mind of Christ discern Who lean like John upon His breast! In him of whom the sibyl told, For whom the prophet's harp was toned, Whose need the sage and magian owned, The loving heart of God behold, The hope for which the ages groaned! Fade, pomp of dreadful imagery Wherewith mankind have deified Their hate, and selfishness, and pride! Let the scared dreamer wake to see The Christ of Nazareth at his side! What doth that holy Guide require?
No rite of pain, nor gift of blood, But man a kindly brotherhood, Looking, where duty is desire, To Him, the beautiful and good.
Gone be the faithlessness of fear, And let the pitying heaven's sweet rain Wash out the altar's bloody stain; The law of Hatred disappear, The law of Love alone remain.
How fall the idols false and grim! And to! their hideous wreck above The emblems of the Lamb and Dove! Man turns from God, not God from him; And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love! The world sits at the feet of Christ, Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; It yet shall touch His garment's fold, And feel the heavenly Alchemist Transform its very dust to gold.
The theme befitting angel tongues Beyond a mortal's scope has grown.
O heart of mine! with reverence own The fulness which to it belongs, And trust the unknown for the known.
1859.
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT.
"And I sought, whence is Evil: I set before the eye of my spirit the whole creation; whatsoever we see therein,--sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral creatures,--yea, whatsoever there is we do not see,--angels and spiritual powers.

Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the Good hath created all things?
Why made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His Almightiness cause it not to be?
These thoughts I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares." "And, admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable.

He who knows the Truth knows what that Light is, and he that knows it knows Eternity! O--Truth, who art Eternity! Love, who art Truth! Eternity, who art Love! And I beheld that Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil.

From the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, and everything is good in its kind.