Man of Uz, and Other Poems | Page 6

entrustments, shows more pure?The perfect essence of its sanctity,?Gold unalloyed.
How doth the cordial grasp,?Of hands that twined with ours in school days, now?Delight us as our sunbeam nears the west,?Soothing, perchance our self-esteem with proofs?That 'mid all faults the good have loved us still,?And quickening with redoubled energy?To do or suffer.
The three friends of Job?Who in the different regions where they dwelt?Teman, and Naamah and the Shuhite land,?Heard tidings of his dire calamity,?Moved by one impulse, journey'd to impart?Their sorrowing sympathy.
Yet when they saw?Him fallen so low, so chang'd that scarce a trace?Remained to herald his identity?Down by his side upon the earth, they sate?Uttering no language save the gushing tear,--?Spontaneous homage to a grief so great.

Oh Silence, born of Wisdom! we have felt?Thy fitness, when beside the smitten friend?We took our place. The voiceless sympathy?The tear, the tender pressure of the hand?Interpreted more perfectly than words?The purpose of our soul.
We _speak_ to err,?Waking to agony some broken chord?Or bleeding nerve that slumbered. Words are weak,?When God's strong discipline doth try the soul;?And that deep silence was more eloquent?Than all the pomp of speech.
Yet the long pause?Of days and nights, gave scope for troubled thought?And their bewildered minds unskillfully?Launching all helmless on a sea of doubt?Explored the cause for which such woes were sent,?Forgetful that this mystery of life?Yields not to man's solution. Passing on?From natural pity to philosophy?That deems Heaven's judgments penal, they inferr'd?Some secret sin unshrived by penitence,?That drew such awful visitations down.?While studying thus the _wherefore_, with vain toil?Of painful cogitation, lo! a voice?Hollow and hoarse, as from the mouldering tomb,
"Perish the day in which I saw the light!?The day when first my mother's nursing care?Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come?Into the number of the joyful months,?Let blackness stain it and the shades of death?Forever terrify it.
For it cut?Not off as an untimely birth my span,?Nor let me sleep where the poor prisoners hear?No more the oppressor, where the wicked cease?From troubling and the weary are at rest.?Now as the roar of waves my sorrows swell,?And sighs like tides burst forth till I forget?To eat my bread. That which I greatly feared?Hath come upon me. Not in heedless pride?Nor wrapped in arrogance of full content?I dwelt amid the tide of prosperous days,?And yet this trouble came."
With mien unmoved?The Temanite reprovingly replied:?"Who can refrain longer from words, even though?To speak be grief? Thou hast the instructor been?Of many, and their model how to act.?When trial came upon them, if their knees?Bow'd down, thou saidst, "be strong," and they obey'd.?But now it toucheth thee and thou dost shrink,?And murmuring, faint. The monitor forgets?The precepts he hath taught. Is this thy faith,?Thy confidence, the uprightness of thy way??Whoever perish'd being innocent??And when were those who walk'd in righteous ways?Cut off? How oft I've seen that those who sow?The seeds of evil secretly, and plow?Under a veil of darkness, reap the same.

In visions of the night, when deepest sleep?Falls upon men, fear seiz'd me, all my bones?Trembled, and every stiffening hair rose up.?A spirit pass'd before me, but I saw?No form thereof. I knew that there it stood,?Even though my straining eyes discern'd it not.?Then from its moveless lips a voice burst forth,?"Is man more just than God? Is mortal man?More pure than He who made him?
Lo, he puts?No trust in those who serve him, and doth charge?Angels with folly. How much less in them?Dwellers in tents of clay, whose pride is crush'd?Before the moth. From morn to eve they die?And none regard it."
So despise thou not?The chastening of the Almighty, ever just,?For did thy spirit please him, it should rise?More glorious from the storm-cloud, all the earth?At peace with thee, new offspring like the grass?Cheering thy home, and when thy course was done?Even as a shock of corn comes fully ripe?Into the garner should thy burial be?Beldv'd and wept of all."
Mournful arose?The sorrowful response.
"Oh that my grief?Were in the balance laid by faithful hands?And feeling hearts. To the afflicted soul?Friends should be comforters. But mine have dealt?Deceitfully, as fails the shallow brook?When summer's need is sorest.
Did I say?Bring me a gift? or from your flowing wealth?Give solace to my desolate penury??Or with your pitying influence neutralize?My cup of scorn poured out by abject hands??That thus ye mock me with contemptuous words?And futile arguments, and dig a pit?In which to whelm the man you call a friend??Still darkly hinting at some heinous sin?Mysteriously concealed?
Writes conscious guilt?No transcript on the brow? Hangs it not out?Its signal there, altho' it seem to hide?'Neath an impervious shroud?
Look thro' the depths?Of my unshrinking eye, deep, deep within.?What see ye there? what gives suspicion birth??As longs the laborer for the setting sun,?Watching the lengthening shadows that foretell?The time of rest, yet day by day returns?To the same task again, so I endure?Wearisome nights and months