Narrative Poems, part 4, Mable Martin etc | Page 6

of creeds?On the ladder of God, which upward leads,?The steps of progress are human needs.?For His judgments still are a mighty deep,?And the eyes of His providence never sleep?When the night is darkest He gives the morn;?When the famine is sorest, the wine and corn!
In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought,?Shaping his creed at the forge of thought;?And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent?The iron links of his argument,?Which strove to grasp in its mighty span?The purpose of God and the fate of man?Yet faithful still, in his daily round?To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,?The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art?Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart.
Had he not seen in the solitudes?Of his deep and dark Northampton woods?A vision of love about him fall??Not the blinding splendor which fell on Saul,?But the tenderer glory that rests on them?Who walk in the New Jerusalem,?Where never the sun nor moon are known,?But the Lord and His love are the light alone?And watching the sweet, still countenance?Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance,?Had he not treasured each broken word?Of the mystical wonder seen and heard;?And loved the beautiful dreamer more?That thus to the desert of earth she bore?Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore?
As the barley-winnower, holding with pain?Aloft in waiting his chaff and grain,?Joyfully welcomes the far-off breeze?Sounding the pine-tree's slender keys,?So he who had waited long to hear?The sound of the Spirit drawing near,?Like that which the son of Iddo heard?When the feet of angels the myrtles stirred,?Felt the answer of prayer, at last,?As over his church the afflatus passed,?Breaking its sleep as breezes break?To sun-bright ripples a stagnant lake.
At first a tremor of silent fear,?The creep of the flesh at danger near,?A vague foreboding and discontent,?Over the hearts of the people went.?All nature warned in sounds and signs?The wind in the tops of the forest pines?In the name of the Highest called to prayer,?As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair.?Through ceiled chambers of secret sin?Sudden and strong the light shone in;?A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs?Startled the man of title-deeds;?The trembling hand of the worldling shook?The dust of years from the Holy Book;?And the psalms of David, forgotten long,?Took the place of the scoffer's song.
The impulse spread like the outward course?Of waters moved by a central force;?The tide of spiritual life rolled down?From inland mountains to seaboard town.
Prepared and ready the altar stands?Waiting the prophet's outstretched hands?And prayer availing, to downward call?The fiery answer in view of all.?Hearts are like wax in the furnace; who?Shall mould, and shape, and cast them anew??Lo! by the Merrimac Whitefield stands?In the temple that never was made by hands,--?Curtains of azure, and crystal wall,?And dome of the sunshine over all--?A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name?Blown about on the winds of fame;?Now as an angel of blessing classed,?And now as a mad enthusiast.?Called in his youth to sound and gauge?The moral lapse of his race and age,?And, sharp as truth, the contrast draw?Of human frailty and perfect law;?Possessed by the one dread thought that lent?Its goad to his fiery temperament,?Up and down the world he went,?A John the Baptist crying, Repent!
No perfect whole can our nature make;?Here or there the circle will break;?The orb of life as it takes the light?On one side leaves the other in night.?Never was saint so good and great?As to give no chance at St. Peter's gate?For the plea of the Devil's advocate.?So, incomplete by his being's law,?The marvellous preacher had his flaw;?With step unequal, and lame with faults,?His shade on the path of History halts.
Wisely and well said the Eastern bard?Fear is easy, but love is hard,--?Easy to glow with the Santon's rage,?And walk on the Meccan pilgrimage;?But he is greatest and best who can?Worship Allah by loving man.?Thus he,--to whom, in the painful stress?Of zeal on fire from its own excess,?Heaven seemed so vast and earth so small?That man was nothing, since God was all,--?Forgot, as the best at times have done,?That the love of the Lord and of man are one.?Little to him whose feet unshod?The thorny path of the desert trod,?Careless of pain, so it led to God,?Seemed the hunger-pang and the poor man's wrong,?The weak ones trodden beneath the strong.?Should the worm be chooser?--the clay withstand?The shaping will of the potter's hand?
In the Indian fable Arjoon hears?The scorn of a god rebuke his fears?"Spare thy pity!" Krishna saith;?"Not in thy sword is the power of death!?All is illusion,--loss but seems;?Pleasure and pain are only dreams;?Who deems he slayeth doth not kill;?Who counts as slain is living still.?Strike, nor fear thy blow is crime;?Nothing dies but the cheats of time;?Slain or slayer, small the odds?To each, immortal as Indra's gods!"
So by Savannah's banks of shade,?The stones of his mission the preacher laid?On the heart of the