The Diary of an Old Soul | Page 4

it, take thou
remembrance' load:
Only when I bethink me can I cry;
Remember
thou, and prick me with love's goad.
9.
If to myself--"God sometimes interferes"--
I said, my faith at once
would be struck blind.
I see him all in all, the lifing mind,
Or
nowhere in the vacant miles and years.
A love he is that watches and
that hears,
Or but a mist fumed up from minds of men,
Whose fear
and hope reach out beyond their ken.
10.
When I no more can stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of
a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live
and love, long and aspire,--
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;

Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake
hope, fear, boundless desire.
11.

I thought that I had lost thee; but, behold!
Thou comest to me from
the horizon low,
Across the fields outspread of green and gold--

Fair carpet for thy feet to come and go.
Whence I know not, or how
to me thou art come!--
Not less my spirit with calm bliss doth glow,

Meeting thee only thus, in nature vague and dumb.
12.
Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!
My soul in
storm is but a tattered sail,
Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;

In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing:
Oh! swell it with thy
breath; make it a wing,--
To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee
the wind
Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.
13.
The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;
Faith swells it full to breast the
breasting seas.
Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;

Hell's freezing north no tempest can send out,
But it shall toss thee
homeward to thy leas;
Boisterous wave-crest never shall o'erwhelm

Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.
14.
Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray--
For doubt, and pain,
and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from
the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch--crouch in the bowery breast
Of the
large, nation-healing tree of life;--
Moveless there sit through all the
burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.
15.
My harvest withers. Health, my means to live--
All things seem
rushing straight into the dark.
But the dark still is God. I would not
give
The smallest silver-piece to turn the rush
Backward or

sideways. Am I not a spark
Of him who is the light?--Fair hope doth
flush
My east.--Divine success--Oh, hush and hark!
16.
Thy will be done. I yield up everything.
"The life is more than
meat"--then more than health;
"The body more than raiment"--then
than wealth;
The hairs I made not, thou art numbering.
Thou art my
life--I the brook, thou the spring.
Because thine eyes are open, I can
see;
Because thou art thyself, 'tis therefore I am me.
17.
No sickness can come near to blast my health;
My life depends not
upon any meat;
My bread comes not from any human tilth;
No
wings will grow upon my changeless wealth;
Wrong cannot touch it,
violence or deceit;
Thou art my life, my health, my bank, my barn--

And from all other gods thou plain dost warn.
18.
Care thou for mine whom I must leave behind;
Care that they know
who 'tis for them takes care;
Thy present patience help them still to
bear;
Lord, keep them clearing, growing, heart and mind;
In one thy
oneness us together bind;
Last earthly prayer with which to thee I
cling--
Grant that, save love, we owe not anything.
19.
'Tis well, for unembodied thought a live,
True house to build--of
stubble, wood, nor hay;
So, like bees round the flower by which they
thrive,
My thoughts are busy with the informing truth,
And as I
build, I feed, and grow in youth--
Hoping to stand fresh, clean, and
strong, and gay,
When up the east comes dawning His great day.

20.
Thy will is truth--'tis therefore fate, the strong.
Would that my will
did sweep full swing with thine!
Then harmony with every spheric
song,
And conscious power, would give sureness divine.
Who
thinks to thread thy great laws' onward throng,
Is as a fly that creeps
his foolish way
Athwart an engine's wheels in smooth resistless play.
21.
Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine,
A scion of the tree of
life: it grows;
But not in every wind or weather it blows;
The leaves
fall sometimes from the baby tree,
And the life-power seems melting
into pine;
Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine,
And the
unseen root clings cramplike unto thee.
22.
Do thou, my God, my spirit's weather control;
And as I do not gloom
though the day be dun,
Let me not gloom when earth-born vapours
roll
Across the infinite zenith of my soul.
Should sudden brain-frost
through the heart's summer run,
Cold, weary, joyless, waste of air and
sun,
Thou art my south, my summer-wind, my all, my one.
23.
O Life, why dost thou close me up in death?
O Health, why make me
inhabit heaviness?--
I ask, yet know: the sum of this