Narrative Poems, part 3, Barclay of Ury etc | Page 6

evening
hymn.
"How blessed the swineherd's low estate,
The beggar crouching at the
gate,
The leper loathly and abhorred,
Whose eyes of flesh beheld
the Lord!
"O sacred soil His sandals pressed!
Sweet fountains of His noonday
rest!
O light and air of Palestine,
Impregnate with His life divine!
"Oh, bear me thither! Let me look
On Siloa's pool, and Kedron's
brook;
Kneel at Gethsemane, and by
Gennesaret walk, before I die!
"Methinks this cold and northern night
Would melt before that Orient
light;
And, wet by Hermon's dew and rain,
My childhood's faith
revive again!"
So spake my friend, one autumn day,
Where the still river slid away

Beneath us, and above the brown
Red curtains of the woods shut
down.
Then said I,--for I could not brook
The mute appealing of his look,--

"I, too, am weak, and faith is small,
And blindness happeneth unto
all.
"Yet, sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong, the
eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady
gain of man;
"That all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time
glad,
Our common daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
"Thou weariest of thy present state;
What gain to thee time's holiest
date?
The doubter now perchance had been
As High Priest or as
Pilate then!

"What thought Chorazin's scribes? What faith
In Him had Nain and
Nazareth?
Of the few followers whom He led
One sold Him,--all
forsook and fled.
"O friend! we need nor rock nor sand,
Nor storied stream of
Morning-Land;
The heavens are glassed in Merrimac,--
What more
could Jordan render back?
"We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient's marvels here;

The still small voice in autumn's hush,
Yon maple wood the burning
bush.
"For still the new transcends the old,
In signs and tokens manifold;

Slaves rise up men; the olive waves,
With roots deep set in battle
graves!
"Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its
way;
Through clouds of doubt, and creeds of fear,
A light is
breaking, calm and clear.
"That song of Love, now low and far,
Erelong shall swell from star to
star!
That light, the breaking day, which tips
The golden-spired
Apocalypse!"
Then, when my good friend shook his head,
And, sighing, sadly
smiled, I said:
"Thou mind'st me of a story told
In rare Bernardin's
leaves of gold."
And while the slanted sunbeams wove
The shadows of the
frost-stained grove,
And, picturing all, the river ran
O'er cloud and
wood, I thus began:--
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
In Mount Valerien's chestnut wood
The Chapel of the Hermits stood;

And thither, at the close of day,
Came two old pilgrims, worn and

gray.
One, whose impetuous youth defied
The storms of Baikal's wintry
side,
And mused and dreamed where tropic day
Flamed o'er his lost
Virginia's bay.
His simple tale of love and woe
All hearts had melted, high or low;--

A blissful pain, a sweet distress,
Immortal in its tenderness.
Yet, while above his charmed page
Beat quick the young heart of his
age,
He walked amidst the crowd unknown,
A sorrowing old man,
strange and lone.
A homeless, troubled age,--the gray
Pale setting of a weary day;

Too dull his ear for voice of praise,
Too sadly worn his brow for
bays.
Pride, lust of power and glory, slept;
Yet still his heart its young
dream kept,
And, wandering like the deluge-dove,
Still sought the
resting-place of love.
And, mateless, childless, envied more
The peasant's welcome from
his door
By smiling eyes at eventide,
Than kingly gifts or lettered
pride.
Until, in place of wife and child,
All-pitying Nature on him smiled,

And gave to him the golden keys
To all her inmost sanctities.
Mild Druid of her wood-paths dim!
She laid her great heart bare to
him,
Its loves and sweet accords;--he saw
The beauty of her perfect
law.
The language of her signs lie knew,
What notes her cloudy clarion
blew;
The rhythm of autumn's forest dyes,
The hymn of sunset's
painted skies.

And thus he seemed to hear the song
Which swept, of old, the stars
along;
And to his eyes the earth once more
Its fresh and primal
beauty wore.
Who sought with him, from summer air,
And field and wood, a balm
for care;
And bathed in light of sunset skies
His tortured nerves and
weary eyes?
His fame on all the winds had flown;
His words had shaken crypt and
throne;
Like fire, on camp and court and cell
They dropped, and
kindled as they fell.
Beneath the pomps of state, below
The mitred juggler's masque and
show,
A prophecy, a vague hope, ran
His burning thought from
man to man.
For peace or rest too well he saw
The fraud of priests, the wrong of
law,
And felt how hard, between the two,
Their breath of pain the
millions drew.
A prophet-utterance, strong and wild,
The weakness of an unweaned
child,
A sun-bright hope for human-kind,
And self-despair, in him
combined.
He loathed the false, yet lived not true
To half the glorious truths he
knew;
The doubt, the discord, and the sin,
He mourned without, he
felt within.
Untrod by him the path he showed,
Sweet pictures on his easel
glowed
Of simple faith, and loves of home,
And virtue's