Occasional Poems | Page 7

Church our broad humanity
White flowers of love its walls shall climb,?Soft bells of peace shall ring its chime,?Its days shall all be holy time.
A sweeter song shall then be heard,--?The music of the world's accord?Confessing Christ, the Inward Word!
That song shall swell from shore to shore,?One hope, one faith, one love, restore?The seamless robe that Jesus wore.
HYMN
FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN,?ERECTED IN MEMORY OF A MOTHER.
The giver of the house was the late George Peabody,?of London.
Thou dwellest not, O Lord of all?In temples which thy children raise;?Our work to thine is mean and small,?And brief to thy eternal days.
Forgive the weakness and the pride,?If marred thereby our gift may be,?For love, at least, has sanctified?The altar that we rear to thee.
The heart and not the hand has wrought?From sunken base to tower above?The image of a tender thought,?The memory of a deathless love!
And though should never sound of speech?Or organ echo from its wall,?Its stones would pious lessons teach,?Its shade in benedictions fall.
Here should the dove of peace be found,?And blessings and not curses given;?Nor strife profane, nor hatred wound,?The mingled loves of earth and heaven.
Thou, who didst soothe with dying breath?The dear one watching by Thy cross,?Forgetful of the pains of death?In sorrow for her mighty loss,
In memory of that tender claim,?O Mother-born, the offering take,?And make it worthy of Thy name,?And bless it for a mother's sake!?1868.
A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION.
Read at the President's Levee, Brown University,?29th 6th month, 1870.
To-day the plant by Williams set?Its summer bloom discloses;?The wilding sweethrier of his prayers?Is crowned with cultured roses.
Once more the Island State repeats?The lesson that he taught her,?And binds his pearl of charity?Upon her brown-locked daughter.
Is 't fancy that he watches still?His Providence plantations??That still the careful Founder takes?A part on these occasions.
Methinks I see that reverend form,?Which all of us so well know?He rises up to speak; he jogs?The presidential elbow.
"Good friends," he says, "you reap a field?I sowed in self-denial,?For toleration had its griefs?And charity its trial.
"Great grace, as saith Sir Thomas More,?To him must needs be given?Who heareth heresy and leaves?The heretic to Heaven!
"I hear again the snuffled tones,?I see in dreary vision?Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,?And prophets with a mission.
"Each zealot thrust before my eyes?His Scripture-garbled label;?All creeds were shouted in my ears?As with the tongues of Babel.
"Scourged at one cart-tail, each denied?The hope of every other;?Each martyr shook his branded fist?At the conscience of his brother!
"How cleft the dreary drone of man.?The shriller pipe of woman,?As Gorton led his saints elect,?Who held all things in common!
"Their gay robes trailed in ditch and swamp,?And torn by thorn and thicket,?The dancing-girls of Merry Mount?Came dragging to my wicket.
"Shrill Anabaptists, shorn of ears;?Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly;?And Antinomians, free of law,?Whose very sins were holy.
"Hoarse ranters, crazed Fifth Monarchists,?Of stripes and bondage braggarts,?Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched?From Puritanic fagots.
"And last, not least, the Quakers came,?With tongues still sore from burning,?The Bay State's dust from off their feet?Before my threshold spurning;
"A motley host, the Lord's debris,?Faith's odds and ends together;?Well might I shrink from guests with lungs?Tough as their breeches leather
"If, when the hangman at their heels?Came, rope in hand to catch them,?I took the hunted outcasts in,?I never sent to fetch them.
"I fed, but spared them not a whit;?I gave to all who walked in,?Not clams and succotash alone,?But stronger meat of doctrine.
"I proved the prophets false, I pricked?The bubble of perfection,?And clapped upon their inner light?The snuffers of election.
"And looking backward on my times,?This credit I am taking;?I kept each sectary's dish apart,?No spiritual chowder making.
"Where now the blending signs of sect?Would puzzle their assorter,?The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,?The Baptist held the water.
"A common coat now serves for both,?The hat's no more a fixture;?And which was wet and which was dry,?Who knows in such a mixture?
"Well! He who fashioned Peter's dream?To bless them all is able;?And bird and beast and creeping thing?Make clean upon His table!
"I walked by my own light; but when?The ways of faith divided,?Was I to force unwilling feet?To tread the path that I did?
"I touched the garment-hem of truth,?Yet saw not all its splendor;?I knew enough of doubt to feel?For every conscience tender.
"God left men free of choice, as when?His Eden-trees were planted;?Because they chose amiss, should I?Deny the gift He granted?
"So, with a common sense of need,?Our common weakness feeling,?I left them with myself to God?And His all-gracious dealing!
"I kept His plan whose rain and sun?To tare and wheat are given;?And if the ways to hell were free,?I left then free to heaven!"
Take heart with us, O man of old,?Soul-freedom's brave confessor,?So love of God and man wax strong,?Let sect and creed be lesser.
The jarring discords of thy day?In ours one hymn are swelling;?The wandering feet, the severed paths,?All seek our Father's dwelling.
And slowly learns the world the truth?That makes us