Poems of Nature, part 6, Religious Poems 2 | Page 4

sight,?Flowers in the desert anchorite;?Dissevered from the suffering whole,?Love hath no power to save a soul.?Not out of Self, the origin?And native air and soil of sin,?The living waters spring and flow,?The trees with leaves of healing grow.
"Dream not, O friend, because I seek?This quiet shelter twice a week,?I better deem its pine-laid floor?Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;?But nature is not solitude?She crowds us with her thronging wood;?Her many hands reach out to us,?Her many tongues are garrulous;?Perpetual riddles of surprise?She offers to our ears and eyes;?She will not leave our senses still,?But drags them captive at her will?And, making earth too great for heaven,?She hides the Giver in the given.
"And so, I find it well to come?For deeper rest to this still room,?For here the habit of the soul?Feels less the outer world's control;?The strength of mutual purpose pleads?More earnestly our common needs;?And from the silence multiplied?By these still forms on either side,?The world that time and sense have known?Falls off and leaves us God alone.
"Yet rarely through the charmed repose?Unmixed the stream of motive flows,?A flavor of its many springs,?The tints of earth and sky it brings;?In the still waters needs must be?Some shade of human sympathy;?And here, in its accustomed place,?I look on memory's dearest face;?The blind by-sitter guesseth not?What shadow haunts that vacant spot;?No eyes save mine alone can see?The love wherewith it welcomes me!?And still, with those alone my kin,?In doubt and weakness, want and sin,?I bow my head, my heart I bare?As when that face was living there,?And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)?The peace of simple trust to gain,?Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay?The idols of my heart away.
"Welcome the silence all unbroken,?Nor less the words of fitness spoken,--?Such golden words as hers for whom?Our autumn flowers have just made room;?Whose hopeful utterance through and through?The freshness of the morning blew;?Who loved not less the earth that light?Fell on it from the heavens in sight,?But saw in all fair forms more fair?The Eternal beauty mirrored there.?Whose eighty years but added grace?And saintlier meaning to her face,--?The look of one who bore away?Glad tidings from the hills of day,?While all our hearts went forth to meet?The coming of her beautiful feet!?Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread?Is in the paths where Jesus led;?Who dreams her childhood's Sabbath dream?By Jordan's willow-shaded stream,?And, of the hymns of hope and faith,?Sung by the monks of Nazareth,?Hears pious echoes, in the call?To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,?Repeating where His works were wrought?The lesson that her Master taught,?Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,?The prophecies of Cuma 's cave.
"I ask no organ's soulless breath?To drone the themes of life and death,?No altar candle-lit by day,?No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,?No cool philosophy to teach?Its bland audacities of speech?To double-tasked idolaters?Themselves their gods and worshippers,?No pulpit hammered by the fist?Of loud-asserting dogmatist,?Who borrows for the Hand of love?The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.?I know how well the fathers taught,?What work the later schoolmen wrought;?I reverence old-time faith and men,?But God is near us now as then;?His force of love is still unspent,?His hate of sin as imminent;?And still the measure of our needs?Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;?The manna gathered yesterday?Already savors of decay;?Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown?Question us now from star and stone;?Too little or too much we know,?And sight is swift and faith is slow;?The power is lost to self-deceive?With shallow forms of make-believe.?W e walk at high noon, and the bells?Call to a thousand oracles,?But the sound deafens, and the light?Is stronger than our dazzled sight;?The letters of the sacred Book?Glimmer and swim beneath our look;?Still struggles in the Age's breast?With deepening agony of quest?The old entreaty: 'Art thou He,?Or look we for the Christ to be?'
"God should be most where man is least?So, where is neither church nor priest,?And never rag of form or creed?To clothe the nakedness of need,--?Where farmer-folk in silence meet,--?I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;'?I lay the critic's glass aside,?I tread upon my lettered pride,?And, lowest-seated, testify?To the oneness of humanity;?Confess the universal want,?And share whatever Heaven may grant.?He findeth not who seeks his own,?The soul is lost that's saved alone.?Not on one favored forehead fell?Of old the fire-tongued miracle,?But flamed o'er all the thronging host?The baptism of the Holy Ghost;?Heart answers heart: in one desire?The blending lines of prayer aspire;?'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'?Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be!'
"So sometimes comes to soul and sense?The feeling which is evidence?That very near about us lies?The realm of spiritual mysteries.?The sphere of the supernal powers?Impinges on this world of ours.?The low and dark horizon lifts,?To light the scenic terror shifts;?The breath of a diviner air?Blows down the answer of a prayer?That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt?A great compassion clasps about,?And law and goodness, love and force,?Are wedded fast beyond divorce.?Then duty