The Diary of an Old Soul | Page 8

unknown
cares;
What the heart's dear imagination dares,
Thou dost transcend
in measureless majesty
All prayers in one--my God, be unto me

Thy own eternal self, absolutely.

9.
Where should the unknown treasures of the truth
Lie, but there
whence the truth comes out the most--
In the Son of man, folded in
love and ruth?
Fair shore we see, fair ocean; but behind
Lie infinite
reaches bathing many a coast--
The human thought of the eternal
mind,
Pulsed by a living tide, blown by a living wind.
10.
Thou, healthful Father, art the Ancient of Days,
And Jesus is the
eternal youth of thee.
Our old age is the scorching of the bush
By
life's indwelling, incorruptible blaze.
O Life, burn at this feeble shell
of me,
Till I the sore singed garment off shall push,
Flap out my
Psyche wings, and to thee rush.
11.
But shall I then rush to thee like a dart?
Or lie long hours æonian yet
betwixt
This hunger in me, and the Father's heart?--
It shall be good,
how ever, and not ill;
Of things and thoughts even now thou art my
next;
Sole neighbour, and no space between, thou art--
And yet art
drawing nearer, nearer still.
12.
Therefore, my brothers, therefore, sisters dear,
However I, troubled or
selfish, fail
In tenderness, or grace, or service clear,
I every moment
draw to you more near;
God in us from our hearts veil after veil

Keeps lifting, till we see with his own sight,
And all together run in
unity's delight.
13.
I love thee, Lord, for very greed of love--
Not of the precious streams
that towards me move,
But of the indwelling, outgoing, fountain store.


Than mine, oh, many an ignorant heart loves more!
Therefore the
more, with Mary at thy feet,
I must sit worshipping--that, in my core,

Thy words may fan to a flame the low primeval heat.
14.
Oh my beloved, gone to heaven from me!
I would be rich in love to
heap you with love;
I long to love you, sweet ones, perfectly--
Like
God, who sees no spanning vault above,
No earth below, and feels no
circling air--
Infinitely, no boundary anywhere.
I am a beast until I
love as God doth love.
15.
Ah, say not, 'tis but perfect self I want
But if it were, that self is fit to
live
Whose perfectness is still itself to scant,
Which never longs to
have, but still to give.
A self I must have, or not be at all:
Love,
give me a self self-giving--or let me fall
To endless darkness back,
and free me from life's thrall.
16.
"Back," said I! Whither back? How to the dark?
>From no dark came
I, but the depths of light;
>From the sun-heart I came, of love a spark:

What should I do but love with all my might?
To die of love severe
and pure and stark,
Were scarcely loss; to lord a loveless height--

That were a living death, damnation's positive night.
17.
But love is life. To die of love is then
The only pass to higher life
than this.
All love is death to loving, living men;
All deaths are
leaps across clefts to the abyss.
Our life is the broken current, Lord,
of thine,
Flashing from morn to morn with conscious shine--
Then
first by willing death self-made, then life divine.

18.
I love you, my sweet children, who are gone
Into another mansion;
but I know
I love you not as I shall love you yet.
I love you, sweet
dead children; there are none
In the land to which ye vanished to go,

Whose hearts more truly on your hearts are set--
Yet should I die
of grief to love you only so.
19.
"I am but as a beast before thee, Lord."--
Great poet-king, I thank
thee for the word.--
Leave not thy son half-made in beastly guise--

Less than a man, with more than human cries--
An unshaped thing in
which thyself cries out!
Finish me, Father; now I am but a doubt;

Oh! make thy moaning thing for joy to leap and shout.
20.
Let my soul talk to thee in ordered words,
O king of kings, O lord of
only lords!--
When I am thinking thee within my heart,
>From the
broken reflex be not far apart.
The troubled water, dim with upstirred
soil,
Makes not the image which it yet can spoil:--
Come nearer,
Lord, and smooth the wrinkled coil.
21.
O Lord, when I do think of my departed,
I think of thee who art the
death of parting;
Of him who crying Father breathed his last,
Then
radiant from the sepulchre upstarted.--
Even then, I think, thy hands
and feet kept smarting:
With us the bitterness of death is past,
But
by the feet he still doth hold us fast.
22.
Therefore our hands thy feet do hold as fast.
We pray not to be spared
the sorest pang,
But only--be thou with us to the last.
Let not our

heart be troubled at the clang
Of hammer and nails, nor dread the
spear's keen fang,
Nor the ghast sickening that comes of pain,
Nor
yet the last clutch of the banished brain.
23.
Lord, pity us: we have no making power;
Then give