What Peace Means | Page 7

But, be sure, he heard, and strove to render, Feeble
echoes of celestial strains.
"No real Poet ever wove in numbers All his dream, but the diviner part,
Hidden from all the world, spake to him only In the voiceless silence of
his heart.
"So with Love: for Love and Art united Are twin mysteries: different
yet the same; Poor indeed would be the love of any Who could find its
full and perfect name.
"Love may strive; but vain is its endeavour All its boundless riches to
unfold; Still its tenderest, truest secret lingers Ever in its deepest depths

untold.
"Things of Time have voices: speak and perish. Art and Love speak;
but their words must be Like sighings of illimitable forests And waves
of an unfathomable sea."
And can it be that death shall put the final seal of irretrievable ruin on
all this uncompleted effort? Can it be that the grave shall whelm all this
unuttered love in endless silence? Ah, what a wild waste of precious
treasure, what a mad destruction of fair designs, what an utter failure,
life would be if death must end all!
The very reasonableness of our nature, our sense of order, declare the
impotence of Death to create such a wreck. And most of all our deep
affections cry out against the conclusion of despair. They will not hear
of dissolution. They reach out their hands into the darkness. They
demand and they promise an unending fellowship, a deepening
communion, a more perfect satisfaction. Do you remember what
Thackeray wrote? "If love lives through all life, and survives through
all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all
darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die, deplores us forever, and
still loves us equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the
faithful bosom, whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death,
surely it shall be immortal. Though we who remain are separated from
it, is it not ours in heaven? If we love still those whom we lose, can we
altogether lose those whom we love?"
To deny this instinct is to deny that which lies at the very root of our
life. If love perishes with death, then our affections are our worst curses,
the world is the cruellest torture-house, and "all things work together
for evil to those who love." Do you believe it? Is it possible? Nay, all
that is best and noblest and purest within us rejects such a faith in
Absolute Evil as the power that has created and rules the world. In the
presence of love we feel that we behold that which must belong to a
good God and therefore cannot die. Destruction cannot touch it. The
grave cannot hold it. Loving and being loved, we dare to stand in the
very doorway of the tomb, and assert the power of an endless life.

And it seems to me that this courage never comes to us so fully as
when we are brought in closest contact with death, when we are
brought face to face with that dread shadow and forced either to deny
its power, once and forever, or to give up everything and die with our
hopes. I wish that I could make this clear to you as it lies in my own
experience. Perhaps in trying to do it I should speak closer to your own
heart than in any other way. For surely
"There is no flock, however watched and tended But one dead lamb is
there. There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended But has a vacant chair."
A flower grew in your garden. You delighted in its beauty and
fragrance. It gave you all it had to give, but it did not love you. It could
not. When the time came for it to die, you were sorry. But it did not
seem to you strange or unnatural. There was no waste. Its mission was
fulfilled. You understood why its petals should fall, its leaf wither, its
root and branch decay. And even if a storm came and snapped it, still
there was nothing lost that was indispensable, nothing that could not be
restored.
A child grew in your household, dearly loved and answering your love.
You saw that soul unfold, learning to know the evil from the good,
learning to accept duty and to resist selfishness, learning to be brave
and true and kind, learning to give you day by day a deeper and a richer
sympathy, learning to love God and to pray and to be good. And then
perhaps you saw that young heart being perfected under the higher and
holier discipline of suffering, bearing pain patiently, facing trouble and
danger like a hero, not shrinking even from