Poems of Nature, part 6, Religious Poems 2 | Page 3

His smile of love,
With Peter His rebuke.
In joy of inward peace, or sense
Of sorrow over sin,
He is His own
best evidence,
His witness is within.
No fable old, nor mythic lore,
Nor dream of bards and seers,
No
dead fact stranded on the shore
Of the oblivious years;--
But warm, sweet, tender, even yet
A present help is He;
And faith
has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.
The healing of His seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain;
We touch
Him in life's throng and press,
And we are whole again.
Through Him the first fond prayers are said
Our lips of childhood
frame,
The last low whispers of our dead
Are burdened with His
name.
Our Lord and Master of us all!
Whate'er our name or sign,
We own
Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine.
Thou judgest us; Thy purity
Doth all our lusts condemn;
The love
that draws us nearer Thee
Is hot with wrath to them.
Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight;
And, naked to Thy glance,
Our
secret sins are in the light
Of Thy pure countenance.
Thy healing pains, a keen distress
Thy tender light shines in;
Thy
sweetness is the bitterness,
Thy grace the pang of sin.

Yet, weak and blinded though we be,
Thou dost our service own;

We bring our varying gifts to Thee,
And Thou rejectest none.
To Thee our full humanity,
Its joys and pains, belong;
The wrong of
man to man on Thee
Inflicts a deeper wrong.
Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes
Therein to Thee allied;

All sweet accords of hearts and homes
In Thee are multiplied.
Deep strike Thy roots, O heavenly Vine,
Within our earthly sod,

Most human and yet most divine,
The flower of man and God!
O Love! O Life! Our faith and sight
Thy presence maketh one
As
through transfigured clouds of white
We trace the noon-day sun.
So, to our mortal eyes subdued,
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed,
We
know in Thee the fatherhood
And heart of God revealed.
We faintly hear, we dimly see,
In differing phrase we pray;
But,
dim or clear, we own in Thee
The Light, the Truth, the Way!
The homage that we render Thee
Is still our Father's own;
No
jealous claim or rivalry
Divides the Cross and Throne.
To do Thy will is more than praise,
As words are less than deeds,

And simple trust can find Thy ways
We miss with chart of creeds.
No pride of self Thy service hath,
No place for me and mine;
Our
human strength is weakness, death
Our life, apart from Thine.
Apart from Thee all gain is loss,
All labor vainly done;
The solemn
shadow of Thy Cross
Is better than the sun.
Alone, O Love ineffable!
Thy saving name is given;
To turn aside
from Thee is hell,
To walk with Thee is heaven!

How vain, secure in all Thou art,
Our noisy championship
The
sighing of the contrite heart
Is more than flattering lip.
Not Thine the bigot's partial plea,
Nor Thine the zealot's ban;
Thou
well canst spare a love of Thee
Which ends in hate of man.
Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may Thy service be?--

Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word,
But simply following Thee.
We bring no ghastly holocaust,
We pile no graven stone;
He serves
thee best who loveth most
His brothers and Thy own.
Thy litanies, sweet offices
Of love and gratitude;
Thy sacramental
liturgies,
The joy of doing good.
In vain shall waves of incense drift
The vaulted nave around,
In
vain the minster turret lift
Its brazen weights of sound.
The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells,
Thy inward altars raise;

Its faith and hope Thy canticles,
And its obedience praise!
1866.
THE MEETING.
The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis
Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in
spirit and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender
concern to her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence and
rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to her
apprehended duty she made visits of Christian love to various parts of
Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine.
The elder folks shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal
passed.
To simple ways like ours unused,
Half solemnized and half
amused,
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest
His sense of
glad relief expressed.
Outside, the hills lay warm in sun;
The cattle
in the meadow-run
Stood half-leg deep; a single bird
The green

repose above us stirred.
"What part or lot have you," he said,
"In
these dull rites of drowsy-head?
Is silence worship? Seek it where
It
soothes with dreams the summer air,
Not in this close and
rude-benched hall,
But where soft lights and shadows fall,
And all
the slow, sleep-walking hours
Glide soundless over grass and flowers!

From time and place and form apart,
Its holy ground the human
heart,
Nor ritual-bound nor templeward
Walks the free spirit of the
Lord!
Our common Master did not pen
His followers up from other
men;
His service liberty indeed,
He built no church, He framed no
creed;
But while the saintly Pharisee
Made broader his phylactery,

As from the synagogue was seen
The dusty-sandalled Nazarene

Through ripening cornfields lead the way
Upon the awful Sabbath
day,
His sermons were the