How vain, secure in all Thou art,
Our noisy championship!
The sighing of the contrite heart
Is more than flattering lip.
Not Thine the bigot's partial plea,
Nor Thine the zealot's ban;
The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in spirit and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender concern to her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence and rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to her apprehended duty she made visits of Christian love to various parts of Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine.
THE elder folks shook hands at last,
Down seat by seat the signal passed.
To simple ways like ours unused,
Half solemnized and half amused,
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my
His sense of glad relief expressed. Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; The cattle in the meadow-run Stood half-leg deep; a single bird The green repose above us stirred. 'What part or lot have you,' he said, 'In these dull rites of drowsy-head? Is silence worship? Seek it where It soothes with dreams the summer air, Not in this close and rude-benched hall, 15 Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 135 But where soft lights and shadows fall,
Thou well canst spare a love of Thee
Which ends in hate of man.
Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord,
What may Thy service be?-
But simply following Thee.
But while the saintly Pharisee
Made broader his phylactery,
As from the synagogue was seen
The dusty-sandalled Nazarene
Through ripening cornfields lead the way
Upon the awful Sabbath day,
His sermons were the healthful talk
That shorter made the mountain-walk, 34
His wayside texts were flowers and birds,
Where mingled with His gracious words
The rustle of the tamarisk-tree
And ripple-wash of Galilee.'
'Thy words are well, O friend,' I said;
'Unmeasured and unlimited,
With noiseless slide of stone to stone,
The mystic Church of God has grown.
Invisible and silent stands
The temple never made with hands,
Unheard the voices still and small
Of its unseen confessional.
'And so I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room,
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world's control;
The strength of mutual purpose pleads
More earnestly our common needs;
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on either side,
The world that time and sense have known
Falls off and leaves us God alone. 86
'Yet rarely through the charmed repose Unmixed the stream of motive flows,
A flavor of its many springs,
The tints of earth and sky it brings; 90
In the still waters needs must be
Some shade of human sympathy;
And here, in its accustomed place,
I look on memory's dearest face;
The blind by-sitter guesseth not
What shadow haunts that vacant spot;
No eyes save mine alone can see
The love wherewith it welcomes me!
In doubt and weakness, want and sin, ICO
And still, with those alone my kin,
I bow my head, my heart I bare,
As when that face was living there,
And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)
55 Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay
The peace of simple trust to gain,
The idols of my heart away.
He needs no special place of prayer
Whose hearing ear is everywhere;
He brings not back the childish days
That ringed the earth with stones of praise,
Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid
The plinths of Philæ's colonnade.
Still less He owns the selfish good
And sickly growth of solitude,-
The worthless grace that, out of sight,
Flowers in the desert anchorite;
Dissevered from the suffering whole,
Love hath no power to save a soul.
Not out of Self, the origin
And native air and soil of sin,
The living waters spring and flow,
The trees with leaves of healing grow.
'Dream not, O friend, because I seek
This quiet shelter twice a week,
I better deem its pine-laid floor
Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;
But nature is not solitude:
The freshness of the morning blew ;
65 Who loved not less the earth that light
Fell on it from the heavens in sight,
But saw in all fair forms more fair 115
The Eternal beauty mirrored there.
Whose eighty years but added grace
70 And saintlier meaning to her face,-
The look of one who bore away
Glad tidings from the hills of day,
While all our hearts went forth to meet
The coming of her beautiful feet!
Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread
Is in the paths where Jesus led;
She crowds us with her thronging wood;
Her many hands reach out to us,
Her many tongues are garrulous;
Perpetual riddles of surprise
She offers to our ears and eyes;
She will not leave our senses still,
But drags them captive at her will:
And, making earth too great for heaven,
She hides the Giver in the given.
Themselves their gods and worshippers,
No pulpit hammered by the fist
Of loud-asserting dogmatist,
Who borrows for the Hand of love
The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.
I know how well the fathers taught,
What work the later schoolmen wrought;
I reverence old-time faith and men,
But God is near us now as then;
His force of love is still unspent,
His hate of sin as imminent;
And still the measure of our needs
Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;
The manna gathered yesterday
Already savors of decay;
Not on one favored forehead fell
Of old the fire-tongued miracle,
But flamed o'er all the thronging host
The baptism of the Holy Ghost;
Heart answers heart: in one desire
The blending lines of prayer aspire ;
"Where, in My name, meet two or three,"
Our Lord hath said, "I there will be !"
145 So sometimes comes to soul and sense 195
The feeling which is evidence
That very near about us lies
The realm of spiritual mysteries.
The sphere of the supernal powers
150 Impinges on this world of ours.
The low and dark horizon lifts,
To light the scenic terror shifts;
The breath of a diviner air
Blows down the answer of a prayer:
That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt 205
A great compassion clasps about,
And law and goodness, love and force,
Are wedded fast beyond divorce.
Then duty leaves to love its task,
The beggar Self forgets to ask;
160 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.
Doubts to the world's child-heart un-
known
Question us now from star and stone;
Too little or too much we know,
And sight is swift and faith is slow;
The power is lost to self-deceive
With shallow forms of make-believe.
We walk at high noon, and the bells
Call to a thousand oracles,
But the sound deafens, and the light
Is stronger than our dazzled sight;
The letters of the sacred Book
Glimmer and swim beneath our look;
Still struggles in the Age's breast
With deepening agony of quest
The old entreaty: "Art Thou He,
Or look we for the Christ to be?"
165 ‘So to the calmly gathered thought 215
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 unsanctified 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
not God, for earth, not
For man,
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.'
1858
Fair seem these winter days, and soon 25 Shall blow the warm west-winds of
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, 35 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!
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;
10 But hearing still, in middle song,
The ceaseless dissonance of wrong;
And shrinking, with hid faces, from the
strain
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 yon 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. 20 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.
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 !
Ah, who shall pray, since he who pleads
Our want perchance hath greater needs?
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 Yet they who make their loss the gain keep A heart that still can feel, and eyes that And Heaven bends low to hear the still can weep.
Of others shall not ask in vain,
Of love from lips of self-despair:
Pray for us!
In vain remorse and fear and hate
Beat with bruised hands against a fate
Whose walls of iron only move
And open to the touch of love.
He only feels his burdens fall
Who, taught by suffering, pities all.
Pray for us!
He prayeth best who leaves unguessed 50
The mystery of another's breast.
Why cheeks grow pale, why eyes o'er
10 Or heads are white, thou need'st not know.
Enough to note by many a sign
That every heart hath needs like thine. 55
Pray for us!
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