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

crown nor
palm be mine, but let me keep
A heart that still can feel, and eyes that
still can weep.
1868.
THE PRAYER-SEEKER.
Along the aisle where prayer was made,
A woman, all in black
arrayed,
Close-veiled, between the kneeling host,
With gliding
motion of a ghost,
Passed to the desk, and laid thereon
A scroll
which bore these words alone,
Pray for me!
Back from the place of worshipping
She glided like a guilty thing

The rustle of her draperies, stirred
By hurrying feet, alone was heard;

While, full of awe, the preacher read,
As out into the dark she sped:

"Pray for me!"
Back to the night from whence she came,
To unimagined grief or
shame!
Across the threshold of that door
None knew the burden
that she bore;
Alone she left the written scroll,
The legend of a
troubled soul,--
Pray for me!
Glide on, poor ghost of woe or sin!
Thou leav'st a common need
within;
Each bears, like thee, some nameless weight,
Some misery
inarticulate,
Some secret sin, some shrouded dread,
Some
household sorrow all unsaid.
Pray for us!
Pass on! The type of all thou art,
Sad witness to the common heart!

With face in veil and seal on lip,
In mute and strange companionship,

Like thee we wander to and fro,
Dumbly imploring as we go

Pray for us!
Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads
Our want perchance hath
greater needs?
Yet they who make their loss the gain
Of others shall
not ask in vain,
And Heaven bends low to hear the prayer
Of love
from lips of self-despair
Pray for us!

In vain remorse and fear and hate
Beat with bruised bands against a
fate
Whose walls of iron only move
And open to the touch of love.

He only feels his burdens fall
Who, taught by suffering, pities all.

Pray for us!
He prayeth best who leaves unguessed
The mystery of another's
breast.
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'erflow,
Or heads are
white, thou need'st not know.
Enough to note by many a sign
That
every heart hath needs like thine.
Pray for us!
1870
THE BREWING OF SOMA.
"These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra: offer
Soma to the drinker of Soma."
--Vashista, translated by MAX
MULLER.
The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood
curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the
brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.
And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their
rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one
voice and will,
"Behold the drink of gods!"
They drank, and to! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began;
The
gray of hair grew young again,
The sick man laughed away his pain,

The cripple leaped and ran.
"Drink, mortals, what the gods have sent,
Forget your long annoy."

So sang the priests. From tent to tent
The Soma's sacred madness
went,
A storm of drunken joy.
Then knew each rapt inebriate
A winged and glorious birth,
Soared
upward, with strange joy elate,
Beat, with dazed head, Varuna's gate,

And, sobered, sank to earth.

The land with Soma's praises rang;
On Gihon's banks of shade
Its
hymns the dusky maidens sang;
In joy of life or mortal pang
All
men to Soma prayed.
The morning twilight of the race
Sends down these matin psalms;

And still with wondering eyes we trace
The simple prayers to Soma's
grace,
That Vedic verse embalms.
As in that child-world's early year,
Each after age has striven
By
music, incense, vigils drear,
And trance, to bring the skies more near,

Or lift men up to heaven!
Some fever of the blood and brain,
Some self-exalting spell,
The
scourger's keen delight of pain,
The Dervish dance, the Orphic strain,

The wild-haired Bacchant's yell,--
The desert's hair-grown hermit sunk
The saner brute below;
The
naked Santon, hashish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,

The fakir's torture-show!
And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfil;
In
sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane

The heathen Soma still!
Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!

Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In
deeper reverence, praise.
In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The
gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise
up and follow Thee.
O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt
to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown

The tender whisper of Thy call,
As noiseless let Thy blessing fall

As fell Thy manna down.
Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take
from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.
Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake,
wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!
1872.
A WOMAN.
Oh, dwarfed and wronged, and stained with ill,
Behold! thou art a
woman still!
And, by that sacred name and dear,
I bid thy better self
appear.
Still, through thy foul disguise, I see
The rudimental purity,

That, spite of change and loss, makes good
Thy birthright-claim of
womanhood;
An inward loathing, deep, intense;
A shame that is
half innocence.
Cast