Poems of Nature, part 6, Religious Poems 2 | Page 9

begun;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,

All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
III.
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;
East, west, north,
and south let the long quarrel cease
Sing the song of great joy that the
angels began,
Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man!
Hark!
joining in chorus
The heavens bend o'er us'
The dark night is
ending and dawn has begun;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,

All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
1873.
VESTA.
O Christ of God! whose life and death
Our own have reconciled,

Most quietly, most tenderly
Take home Thy star-named child!
Thy grace is in her patient eyes,
Thy words are on her tongue;
The
very silence round her seems
As if the angels sung.
Her smile is as a listening child's
Who hears its mother call;
The
lilies of Thy perfect peace
About her pillow fall.
She leans from out our clinging arms
To rest herself in Thine;

Alone to Thee, dear Lord, can we
Our well-beloved resign!
Oh, less for her than for ourselves
We bow our heads and pray;
Her
setting star, like Bethlehem's,

To Thee shall point the way!
1874.

CHILD-SONGS.
Still linger in our noon of time
And on our Saxon tongue
The
echoes of the home-born hymns
The Aryan mothers sung.
And childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest
cradles of the race
Were rocked to poet's rhyme.
Nor sky, nor wave, nor tree, nor flower,
Nor green earth's virgin sod,

So moved the singer's heart of old
As these small ones of God.
The mystery of unfolding life
Was more than dawning morn,
Than
opening flower or crescent moon
The human soul new-born.
And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And
more than all the sages teach
From lisping voices learns,--
The voices loved of him who sang,
Where Tweed and Teviot glide,

That sound to-day on all the winds
That blow from Rydal-side,--
Heard in the Teuton's household songs,
And folk-lore of the Finn,

Where'er to holy Christmas hearths
The Christ-child enters in!
Before life's sweetest mystery still
The heart in reverence kneels;

The wonder of the primal birth
The latest mother feels.
We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God
hath His small interpreters;
The child must teach the man.
We wander wide through evil years,
Our eyes of faith grow dim;

But he is freshest from His hands
And nearest unto Him!
And haply, pleading long with Him
For sin-sick hearts and cold,

The angels of our childhood still
The Father's face behold.
Of such the kingdom!--Teach Thou us,
O-Master most divine,
To

feel the deep significance
Of these wise words of Thine!
The haughty eye shall seek in vain
What innocence beholds;
No
cunning finds the key of heaven,
No strength its gate unfolds.
Alone to guilelessness and love
That gate shall open fall;
The mind
of pride is nothingness,
The childlike heart is all!
1875.
THE HEALER.
TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S PICTURE OF
CHRIST
HEALING THE SICK.
So stood of old the holy Christ
Amidst the suffering throng;
With
whom His lightest touch sufficed
To make the weakest strong.
That healing gift He lends to them
Who use it in His name;
The
power that filled His garment's hem
Is evermore the same.
For lo! in human hearts unseen
The Healer dwelleth still,
And they
who make His temples clean
The best subserve His will.
The holiest task by Heaven decreed,
An errand all divine,
The
burden of our common need
To render less is thine.
The paths of pain are thine. Go forth
With patience, trust, and hope;

The sufferings of a sin-sick earth
Shall give thee ample scope.
Beside the unveiled mysteries
Of life and death go stand,
With
guarded lips and reverent eyes
And pure of heart and hand.
So shalt thou be with power endued
From Him who went about
The
Syrian hillsides doing good,
And casting demons out.
That Good Physician liveth yet
Thy friend and guide to be;
The
Healer by Gennesaret
Shall walk the rounds with thee.

THE TWO ANGELS.
God called the nearest angels who dwell with Him above:
The
tenderest one was Pity, the dearest one was Love.
"Arise," He said, "my angels! a wail of woe and sin
Steals through
the gates of heaven, and saddens all within.
"My harps take up the mournful strain that from a lost world swells,
The smoke of torment clouds the light and blights the asphodels.
"Fly downward to that under world, and on its souls of pain Let Love
drop smiles like sunshine, and Pity tears like rain!"
Two faces bowed before the Throne, veiled in their golden hair; Four
white wings lessened swiftly down the dark abyss of air.
The way was strange, the flight was long; at last the angels came
Where swung the lost and nether world, red-wrapped in rayless flame.
There Pity, shuddering, wept; but Love, with faith too strong for fear,
Took heart from God's almightiness and smiled a smile of cheer.
And lo! that tear of Pity quenched the flame whereon it fell, And, with
the sunshine of that smile, hope entered into hell!
Two unveiled faces full of joy looked upward to the Throne,