Poems of the Heart and Home | Page 6

on vacancy; And woe and dread on every brow In changeless lines were wrought,-- Sad traces of the anguish deep That filled their latest thought!
They seemed a race of other time, O'er whom the desert's blast, For many a long and weary age, In fiery wrath had passed; Till, scathed and dry, each wasted form Its rigid aspect wore, Unchanged, though centuries had passed The lonely desert o'er.
Was it the clash of foreign arms-- Was it the invader's tread,-- From which this simple-minded race In wildest terror fled,-- Choosing, amid the desert-sands, Scorched by the desert's breath, Rather than by the invaders' steel, To meet the stroke of death?
And there they died--a free-born race-- From their proud hills away, While round them in its lonely pride The far, free desert lay And there, unburied, still they sit, All statute like and cold, Free, e'en in death, though o'er their homes Oppression's tide has rolled!

BE STILL.
O throbbing heart, be still! Canst thou not bear The heavy dash of Memory's troubled tide, Long sternly pent, but broken forth again, Sweeping all barriers ruthlessly aside, And leaving desolation in its train Where all was fair?
Fair, did I say?--Oh yes!-- I'd reared sweet flowers Of steadfast hope, and quiet, patient trust, Above the wreck and ruin of my years;-- Had won a plant of beauty from the dust, Fanned it with breath of prayer, and wet with tears Of loneliest hours!
O throbbing heart, be still! That cherished flower-- Faith in thy God--last grown, yet first in worth, Will spring anew ere long--it is not dead, 'Tis only beaten to the breast of earth! Let the storm rage--be calm--'twill lift its head Some stiller hour!

LITTLEWIT AND LOFTUS.
John Littlewit, friends, was a credulous man. In the good time long ago, Ere men had gone wild o'er the latter-day dream Of turning the world upside down with steam, Or of chaining the lightning down to a wire, And making it talk with its tongue of fire.
He was perfectly sure that the world stood still, And the sun and moon went round;-- He believed in fairies, and goblins ill, And witches that rode over vale and hill On wicked broom-sticks, studying still Mischief and craft profound.
"What a fool was John Littlewit!" somebody cries;-- Nay, friend, not so fast, if you please! A humble man was John Littlewit-- A gentle, loving man; He clothed the needy, the hungry fed, Pitied the erring, the faltering led, Joyed with the joyous, wept with the sad, Made the heart of the widow and orphan glad, And never left for the lowliest one An act of kindness and love undone;-- And when he died, we may well believe God's blessed angels bore John Littlewit's peaceful soul away To the beautiful Heaven for which we pray, Where the tree of knowledge blooms for aye, And ignorance plagues no more.
Squire Loftus, friends, was a cultured man, You knew him-so did I: He had studied the "Sciences" through and through, Had forgotten far more than the ancients knew, Yet still retained enough To demonstrate clearly that all the old, Good, practical Bible-truths we hold Are delusion, nonsense, stuff!
He could show that the earth had begun to grow Millions and millions of ages ago; That man had developed up and out From something Moses knew nothing about,-- Held with Pope that all are but parts of a whole Whose body is Nature, and God its Soul;-- And, since he was a part of that same great whole, Then the soul of all Nature was also his soul;-- Or, more plainly--to be not obscure or dim-- That God had developed Himself in him:-- That what is called Sin in mankind, is not so, But is just _misdirection_, all owing, you know, To defectiveness either of body or brain, Or both, which the soul is not thought to retain,-- In the body it acts as it _must_, but that dead All stain from the innocent soul will have fled!
"How wise was Squire Loftus!" there's somebody cries;-- Nay, friend, not so fast, if you please; His wisdom was that of the self-deceived fool Who quits the clear fount for the foul, stagnant pool, Who puts out his eyes lest the light he descry, Then shouts 'mid the gloom "how clear-sighted am I!" Who turns from the glorious fountain of Day, To follow the wild _ignis fatuus_' ray Through quagmire and swamp, ever farther astray, With every step that he takes.
But he died as he lived; and the desolate night He had courted and loved better far than the light, Grew more and more dark, till he passed from our sight, And what shall I say of him more?-- Give me rather John Littlewit's questionless faith, To illume my lone path through the valley of death-- The arm that he leaned