Poems of Nature, part 6, Religious Poems 2 | Page 5

leaves to love its task,?The beggar Self forgets to ask;?With smile of trust and folded hands,?The passive soul in waiting stands?To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,?The One true Life its own renew.
"So, to the calmly gathered thought?The innermost of truth is taught,?The mystery dimly understood,?That love of God is love of good,?And, chiefly, its divinest trace?In Him of Nazareth's holy face;?That to be saved is only this,--?Salvation from our selfishness,?From more than elemental fire,?The soul's unsanetified desire,?From sin itself, and not the pain?That warns us of its chafing chain;?That worship's deeper meaning lies?In mercy, and not sacrifice,?Not proud humilities of sense?And posturing of penitence,?But love's unforced obedience;?That Book and Church and Day are given?For man, not God,--for earth, not heaven,--?The blessed means to holiest ends,?Not masters, but benignant friends;?That the dear Christ dwells not afar,?The king of some remoter star,?Listening, at times, with flattered ear?To homage wrung from selfish fear,?But here, amidst the poor and blind,?The bound and suffering of our kind,?In works we do, in prayers we pray,?Life of our life, He lives to-day."?1868.
THE CLEAR VISION.
I did but dream. I never knew?What charms our sternest season wore.?Was never yet the sky so blue,?Was never earth so white before.?Till now I never saw the glow?Of sunset on yon hills of snow,?And never learned the bough's designs?Of beauty in its leafless lines.
Did ever such a morning break?As that my eastern windows see??Did ever such a moonlight take?Weird photographs of shrub and tree??Rang ever bells so wild and fleet?The music of the winter street??Was ever yet a sound by half?So merry as you school-boy's laugh?
O Earth! with gladness overfraught,?No added charm thy face hath found;?Within my heart the change is wrought,?My footsteps make enchanted ground.?From couch of pain and curtained room?Forth to thy light and air I come,?To find in all that meets my eyes?The freshness of a glad surprise.
Fair seem these winter days, and soon?Shall blow the warm west-winds of spring,?To set the unbound rills in tune?And hither urge the bluebird's wing.?The vales shall laugh in flowers, the woods?Grow misty green with leafing buds,?And violets and wind-flowers sway?Against the throbbing heart of May.
Break forth, my lips, in praise, and own?The wiser love severely kind;?Since, richer for its chastening grown,?I see, whereas I once was blind.?The world, O Father! hath not wronged?With loss the life by Thee prolonged;?But still, with every added year,?More beautiful Thy works appear!
As Thou hast made thy world without,?Make Thou more fair my world within;?Shine through its lingering clouds of doubt;?Rebuke its haunting shapes of sin;?Fill, brief or long, my granted span?Of life with love to thee and man;?Strike when thou wilt the hour of rest,?But let my last days be my best!?2d mo., 1868.
DIVINE COMPASSION.
Long since, a dream of heaven I had,?And still the vision haunts me oft;?I see the saints in white robes clad,?The martyrs with their palms aloft;?But hearing still, in middle song,?The ceaseless dissonance of wrong;?And shrinking, with hid faces, from the strain?Of sad, beseeching eyes, full of remorse and pain.
The glad song falters to a wail,?The harping sinks to low lament;?Before the still unlifted veil?I see the crowned foreheads bent,?Making more sweet the heavenly air,?With breathings of unselfish prayer;?And a Voice saith: "O Pity which is pain,?O Love that weeps, fill up my sufferings which remain!
"Shall souls redeemed by me refuse?To share my sorrow in their turn??Or, sin-forgiven, my gift abuse?Of peace with selfish unconcern??Has saintly ease no pitying care??Has faith no work, and love no prayer??While sin remains, and souls in darkness dwell,?Can heaven itself be heaven, and look unmoved on hell?"
Then through the Gates of Pain, I dream,?A wind of heaven blows coolly in;?Fainter the awful discords seem,?The smoke of torment grows more thin,?Tears quench the burning soil, and thence?Spring sweet, pale flowers of penitence?And through the dreary realm of man's despair,?Star-crowned an angel walks, and to! God's hope is there!
Is it a dream? Is heaven so high?That pity cannot breathe its air??Its happy eyes forever dry,?Its holy lips without a prayer!?My God! my God! if thither led?By Thy free grace unmerited,?No 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