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

change
Which needs must be in
a century's range.
The land lies open and warm in the sun,

Anvils
clamor and mill-wheels run,--
Flocks on the hillsides, herds on the
plain,
The wilderness gladdened with fruit and grain!
But the living
faith of the settlers old
A dead profession their children hold;
To the

lust of office and greed of trade
A stepping-stone is the altar made.
The church, to place and power the door,
Rebukes the sin of the
world no more,
Nor sees its Lord in the homeless poor.
Everywhere
is the grasping hand,
And eager adding of land to land;
And earth,
which seemed to the fathers meant
But as a pilgrim's wayside tent,--

A nightly shelter to fold away
When the Lord should call at the
break of day,--
Solid and steadfast seems to be,
And Time has
forgotten Eternity!
But fresh and green from the rotting roots
Of primal forests the young
growth shoots;
From the death of the old the new proceeds,
And the
life of truth from the rot 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