Bitter-Sweet | Page 5

inn,

Whose haunted halls and mazy passages
Receive no light, save
through the riddled roof,
Pierced thick by pilgrim staves, that Faith
may lie
Upon its back, and only gaze on Heaven.
I would not
banish evil if I could;
Nor would I be so deep in love with joy
As to
seek for it in forgetfulness,
Through faith or fear.
Ruth.
Teach me the better way,
And every expiration from my lips
Shall
be a grateful blessing on your head;
And in the coming world I'll seek
the side
Of no more gracious angel than the man
Who gives me
brotherhood by leading me
Home with himself to heaven.
Israel.
My son,
Be careful of your words! 'Tis no light thing
To take the
guidance of a straying soul.
David.
I mark the burden well, and love it, too,
Because I love the girl and
love her Lord,
And seek to vindicate His love to her
And waken
hers for Him. Be this my plea:
God is almighty--all-benevolent;

And naught exists save by His loving will.
Evil, or what we reckon

such, exists,
And not against His will; else the Supreme
Is subject,
and we have in place of God
A phantom nothing, with a phantom
name.
Therefore I care not whether He ordain
That evil live, or
whether He permit;
Therefore I ask not why, in either case,
As if He
meant to curse me, but I ask
What He would have this evil do for me?

What is its mission? what its ministry?
What golden fruit lies
hidden in its husk?
How shall it nurse my virtue, nerve my will,

Chasten my passions, purify my love,
And make me in some goodly
sense like Him
Who bore the cross of evil while He lived,
Who
hung and bled upon it when He died,
And now, in glory, wears the
victor's crown?
Israel.
If evil, then, have privilege and part
In the economy of holiness,

Why came the Christ to save us from its power,
And bring us
restoration of the bliss
Lost in the lapse of Eden?
David.
And would you
Or Ruth 'have restoration of that bliss,
And
welcome transplantation to the state
Associate with it?
Ruth.
Would I? Would I not!
Oh, I have dreamed of it a thousand times,

Sleeping and waking, since the torch of thought
Flashed into flame at
Revelation's touch,
And filled my spirit with its quenchless fire.

Most envious dreams of innocence and joy
Have haunted
me,--dreams that were born in sin,
Yet swathed in stainless snow. I've
dreamed, and dreamed, Of wondrous trees, crowned with perennial
green,
Whose soft still shadows gleamed with golden lamps
Of
pensile fruitage, or were flushed with life
Radiant and tuneful when
broad flocks of birds
Swept in and out like sheets of living flame.

I've dreamed of aisles tufted with velvet grass,
And bordered with the

strange intelligence
Of myriad loving eyes among the flowers,
That
watched me with a curious, calm delight,
As rows of wayside
cherubim may watch
A new soul, walking into Paradise.
I've
dreamed of sunsets when the sun supine
Lay rocking on the ocean
like a god,
And threw his weary arms far up the sky,
And with
vermilion-tinted fingers toyed
With the long tresses of the evening
star.
I've dreamed of dreams more beautiful than all--
Dreams that
were music, perfume, vision, bliss,--
Blent and sublimed, till I have
stood inwrapped
In the thick essence of an atmosphere
That made
me tremble to unclose my eyes
Lest I should look on God. And I
have dreamed
Of sinless men and maids, mated in heaven,
Ere yet
their souls had sought for beauteous forms
To give them human sense
and residence,
Moving through all this realm of choice delights
For
ever and for aye; with hands and hearts
Immaculate as light; without
a thought
Of evil, and without a name for fear.
Oh, when I wake
from happy dreams like these,
To the old consciousness that I must
die,
To the old presence of a guilty heart,
To the old fear that haunts
me night and day,
Why should I not deplore the graceless fall
That
makes me what I am, and shuts me out
From a condition and society

As much above a sinful maiden's dreams
As Eden blest surpasses
Eden curst?
David.
So you would be another Eve, and so--
Fall with the first temptation,
like herself!
God seeks for virtue; you for innocence.
You'll find it
in the cradle--nowhere else--
Save in your dreams, among the
grown-up babes
That dwelt in Eden--powerless, pulpy souls
That
showed a dimple for each touch of sin.

God seeks for virtue, and, that
it may live,
It must resist, and that which it resists
Must live.
Believe me, God has other thought
Than restoration of our fallen race

To its primeval innocence and bliss.
If Jesus Christ--as we are
taught--was slain
From the foundation of the world, it was
Because

our evil lived in essence then--
Coeval with the great, mysterious fact.

And He was slain that we might be transformed,--
Not into Adam's
sweet similitude--
But the more glorious image of Himself,
A
resolution of our destiny
As high transcending Eden's life and lot

As He surpasses Eden's fallen lord.
Ruth.
You're very bold, my brother, very bold.
Did I not know you for an
earnest man,
When sacred themes move you to utterance,
I'd chide
you for those most irreverent words
Which make essential