Narrative Poems, part 4, Mable Martin etc | Page 7

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 negro crushed and rent,
And made
of his blood the wall's cement;
Bade the slave-ship speed from coast
to coast,
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost;
And begged, for
the love of Christ, the gold
Coined from the hearts in its groaning
hold.
What could it matter, more or less
Of stripes, and hunger, and
weariness?
Living or dying, bond or free,
What was time to
eternity?
Alas for the preacher's cherished schemes!
Mission and church are
now but dreams;
Nor prayer nor fasting availed the plan
To honor
God through the wrong of man.
Of all his labors no trace remains

Save the bondman lifting his hands in chains.
The woof he wove in
the righteous warp
Of freedom-loving Oglethorpe,
Clothes with
curses the goodly land,
Changes its greenness and bloom to sand;

And a century's lapse reveals once more
The slave-ship stealing to
Georgia's shore.
Father of Light! how blind is he
Who sprinkles the
altar he rears to Thee
With the blood and tears of humanity!
He erred: shall we count His gifts as naught?
Was the work of God in
him unwrought?
The servant may through his deafness err,
And
blind may be God's messenger;
But the Errand is sure they go upon,--

The word is spoken, the deed is done.
Was the Hebrew temple less
fair and good
That Solomon bowed to gods of wood?
For his
tempted heart and wandering feet,
Were the songs of David less pure
and sweet?
So in light and shadow the preacher went,
God's erring
and human instrument;
And the hearts of the people where he passed

Swayed as the reeds sway in the blast,
Under the spell of a voice
which took

In its compass the flow of Siloa's brook,
And the
mystical chime of the bells of gold
On the ephod's hem of the priest
of old,--
Now the roll of thunder, and now the awe
Of the trumpet
heard in the Mount of Law.
A solemn fear on the listening crowd
Fell like the shadow of a cloud.


The sailor reeling from out the ships
Whose masts stood thick in
the river-slips
Felt the jest and the curse die on his lips.
Listened the
fisherman rude and hard,
The calker rough from the builder's yard;

The man of the market left his load,
The teamster leaned on his
bending goad,
The maiden, and youth beside her, felt
Their hearts
in a closer union melt,
And saw the flowers of their love in bloom

Down the endless vistas of life to come.
Old age sat feebly brushing
away
From his ears the scanty locks of gray;
And careless boyhood,
living the free
Unconscious life of bird and tree,
Suddenly wakened
to a sense
Of sin and its guilty consequence.
It was as if an angel's
voice
Called the listeners up for their final choice;
As if a strong
hand rent apart
The veils of sense from soul and heart,
Showing in
light ineffable
The joys of heaven and woes of hell
All about in the
misty air
The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer;
The rustle of
leaves, the moaning sedge,
The water's lap on its gravelled edge,

The wailing pines, and, far and faint,
The wood-dove's note of sad
complaint,--
To the solemn voice of the preacher lent
An undertone
as of low lament;
And the note of the sea from its sand coast,
On
the easterly wind, now heard, now lost,
Seemed the murmurous
sound of the judgment host.
Yet wise men doubted, and good men wept,
As that storm of passion
above them swept,
And, comet-like, adding flame to flame,
The
priests of the new Evangel came,--
Davenport, flashing upon the
crowd,
Charged like summer's electric cloud,
Now holding the
listener still as death

With terrible warnings under breath,
Now
shouting for joy, as if he viewed
The vision of Heaven's beatitude!

And Celtic Tennant, his long coat bound
Like a monk's with leathern
girdle round,
Wild with the toss of unshorn hair,
And wringing of
hands, and, eyes aglare,
Groaning under the world's despair!
Grave
pastors, grieving their flocks to lose,
Prophesied to the empty pews

That gourds would wither, and mushrooms die,
And noisiest
fountains run soonest dry,
Like the spring that gushed in Newbury

Street,
Under the tramp of the earthquake's feet,
A silver shaft in the
air and light,
For a single day, then lost in night,
Leaving only,