Narrative Poems, part 3, Barclay of Ury etc | Page 9

is light in Heaven."?1853.
THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID.
O STRONG, upwelling prayers of faith,?From inmost founts of life ye start,--?The spirit's pulse, the vital breath?Of soul and heart!
From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,?Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,?Unheard of man, ye enter in?The ear of God.
Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,?Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;?The simple heart, that freely asks?In love, obtains.
For man the living temple is?The mercy-seat and cherubim,?And all the holy mysteries,?He bears with him.
And most avails the prayer of love,?Which, wordless, shapes itself in needs,?And wearies Heaven for naught above?Our common needs.
Which brings to God's all-perfect will?That trust of His undoubting child?Whereby all seeming good and ill?Are reconciled.
And, seeking not for special signs?Of favor, is content to fall?Within the providence which shines?And rains on all.
Alone, the Thebaid hermit leaned?At noontime o'er the sacred word.?Was it an angel or a fiend?Whose voice be heard?
It broke the desert's hush of awe,?A human utterance, sweet and mild;?And, looking up, the hermit saw?A little child.
A child, with wonder-widened eyes,?O'erawed and troubled by the sight?Of hot, red sands, and brazen skies,?And anchorite.
"'What dost thou here, poor man? No shade?Of cool, green palms, nor grass, nor well,?Nor corn, nor vines." The hermit said?"With God I dwell.
"Alone with Him in this great calm,?I live not by the outward sense;?My Nile his love, my sheltering palm?His providence."
The child gazed round him. "Does God live?Here only?--where the desert's rim?Is green with corn, at morn and eve,?We pray to Him.
"My brother tills beside the Nile?His little field; beneath the leaves?My sisters sit and spin, the while?My mother weaves.
"And when the millet's ripe heads fall,?And all the bean-field hangs in pod,?My mother smiles, and, says that all?Are gifts from God."
Adown the hermit's wasted cheeks?Glistened the flow of human tears;?"Dear Lord!" he said, "Thy angel speaks,?Thy servant hears."
Within his arms the child he took,?And thought of home and life with men;?And all his pilgrim feet forsook?Returned again.
The palmy shadows cool and long,?The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,?Home's cradle-hymn and harvest-song,?And bleat of flocks.
"O child!" he said, "thou teachest me?There is no place where God is not;?That love will make, where'er it be,?A holy spot."
He rose from off the desert sand,?And, leaning on his staff of thorn,?Went with the young child hand in hand,?Like night with morn.
They crossed the desert's burning line,?And heard the palm-tree's rustling fan,?The Nile-bird's cry, the low of kine,?And voice of man.
Unquestioning, his childish guide?He followed, as the small hand led?To where a woman, gentle-eyed,?Her distaff fed.
She rose, she clasped her truant boy,?She thanked the stranger with her eyes;?The hermit gazed in doubt and joy?And dumb surprise.
And to!--with sudden warmth and light?A tender memory thrilled his frame;?New-born, the world-lost anchorite?A man became.
"O sister of El Zara's race,?Behold me!--had we not one mother?"?She gazed into the stranger's face?"Thou art my brother!"
"And when to share our evening meal,?She calls the stranger at the door,?She says God fills the hands that deal?Food to the poor."
"O kin of blood! Thy life of use?And patient trust is more than mine;?And wiser than the gray recluse?This child of thine.
"For, taught of him whom God hath sent,?That toil is praise, and love is prayer,?I come, life's cares and pains content?With thee to share."
Even as his foot the threshold crossed,?The hermit's better life began;?Its holiest saint the Thebaid lost,?And found a man!?1854.
MAUD MULLER.
The recollection of some descendants of a Hessian deserter in the Revolutionary war bearing the name of Muller doubtless suggested the somewhat infelicitous title of a New England idyl. The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine seaboard with my sister some years before it was written. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from a little brook which rippled through the stone wall across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did so, through the tan of her cheek and neck.
MAUD MULLER on a summer's day,?Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth?Of simple beauty and rustic-health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee?The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town,?White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest?And a nameless longing filled her breast,--
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,?For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,?Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade?Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And asked a draught from the spring that flowed?Through