A Few More Verses
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LENT
IS it the Fast which God approves,When I awhile for flesh eat fish,Changing one dainty dishFor others no less good?Do angels smile and count it gainThat I compose my laughing faceTo gravity for a brief space,Then straightway laugh again?Does Heaven take pleasure as I sitCounting my joys as usurers gold, —This bit to give, that to withhold,Weighing and measuring it;Setting off abstinence from danceAs buying privilege of song;Calling six right and seven wrong,With decorous countenance;Compounding for the dull to-dayBy projects for to-morrow’s fun,Checking off each set task as done,Grudging a short delay?I cannot think that God will careFor such observance; He can seeThe very inmost heart of me,And every secret there.But if I keep a truer Lent,Not heeding what I wear or eat,Not balancing the sour with sweet,Evenly abstinent,And lay my soul with all its stainOf travel from the year-long road,Between the healing hands of GodTo be made clean again;And put my sordid self away,Forgetting for a little spaceThe petty prize, the eager race,The restless, striving day;Opening my darkness to the sun,Opening my narrow eyes to seeThe pain and need so close to meWhich I had willed to shun;Praying God’s quickening grace to showThe thing he fain would have me do,The errand that I may pursueAnd quickly rise and go; —If so I do it, starving pride,Fasting from sin instead of food,God will accept such Lent as good,And bless its Easter-tide.PALM SUNDAY
THE multitude was crowding all the way,But yesterday,To see and touch the Lord as he rode by,To catch his eye,Or at the very least a palm-branch flingUpon the pathway of the chosen King.Faded and dry those palms lie in the sun,Witherèd each one;Those glad, rejoicing shouters presentlyWill flock to see,With never thought of pity or of loss,The King of Glory on his cruel cross.Lord, we would fain some little palm-branch layUpon thy way;But we have nothing fair enough or sweetFor holy feetTo tread, nor dare our sin-stained garments flingUpon the road where rides the Righteous King.Yet thou, all-gracious One, didst not refuseThose fickle Jews;And even such worthless leaves as we may cull,Faded and dull,Thou wilt endure and pardon and receive,Because thou knowest we have naught else to give.So, Lord, our stubborn wills we first will break,If thou wilt take;And next our selfishness, and then our pride, —And what beside?Our hearts, Lord, poor and fruitless though they be,And quick to change, and nothing worth to see.If but the foldings of thy garment’s hemShall shadow them,These worthless leaves which we have brought and strewedAlong thy roadShall be raised up and made divinely sweet,And fit to lie beneath thy gracious feet.SOUL AND BODY
THE Soul said to the Body, in the watches of the night:“I am the nobler part of thee, stronger and far more worth.God gave me of his life of life a tiny point of light;I show his glory to the world, but thou art of the earth.”The Body answered to the Soul: “Lower I am, and yetGod made me in his image for angel eyes to see.Thou art but viewless essence, whom all men would forgetExcept for the abiding-place which thou hast found in me.”The Soul said to the Body: “I guide thee at my will.I am the wind within the sail, which else would lifeless swing;I am the mainspring of the watch, which else, inert and still,Would cumber all the universe, a dead and useless thing.”“I too have rule,” the Body cried. “I curb thy higher flights;I fetter all thy soarings, and I bind thee, and I grieve.I can sting thee into wakefulness through long, unresting nights;Can take the glory from thy noon, the splendor from thy eve.”“And well can I return such wrong,” replied the eager Soul.“How often hast thou laid thee down, to find thy sleep denied?While I quickened in thy brain, robbed thy heart-beats of control,And poured through every artery my warm, pulsating tide?“Thou shalt lie down to sleep one day, and long that sleep shall last,For I will shake thy shackles off and soar up to the skies;What power shall avail thee then to break thy slumber fast?What voice shall reach thy dreaming ear, to say to thee, ‘Arise’?”“Ah, Soul!” the Body humbly urged, “be merciful, I pray;Thou art the nobler part, but thou canst never let me go.I have my certain share of all, thy best, thy worst, alway:We are inextricably blent. God willed it should be so.“Thou wilt reach heaven before me, but I may follow too.There is a resurrection for the Body, as the Soul;Comrades to all eternity, we should be comrades trueWho own one common fate and life, who seek the self-same goal.“Forbear, then, to reproach me, O brother given by Heaven!I wrong myself in wronging thee, dearest and closest friend!Let all our variance and strife be buried and forgiven,And let us work together in love unto the end.”Then the Soul smiled on the Body, and the Body drank the smile,As meadow pastures drink the flood of sunshine still and deep;And the two embraced each other, and in a little while,Close folded in the Body’s arms, the Soul had fallen asleep.SOUND AT CORE
THE wind is fierce and loud and high,The angry tempest hurtles by;With quivering keel and straining sailThe ship of State confronts the gale.Rocks are ahead and peril near;But still we face the storm, nor fear,Saying this brave truth o’er and o’er:“The nation’s heart is sound at core.”We knew it in those darker daysWhen all the kind, familiar waysAnd all the tenderness of lifeSeemed lost in bitterness and strife;When, torn with shot and riddled through,Lay in the dust our Red and Blue,Dropped by the gallant hands that bore,“The nation’s heart is sound at core.”We said it when the war-cloud rent,And out of field and out of tentThe bronzèd soldiers, Blue and Gray,Took each the peaceful homeward way;When the foiled traitors sought to attainBy fraud what force had failed to gain, —Heart-sick, we said the words once more:“The nation’s heart is sound at core.”And always, as the worst seemed near,And stout hearts failed for very fear,Came a great throb the country through, —The nation’s heart still beating true!Ah, mother-land and mother-breast,We still will trust you and will rest;Although waves howl and tempests lower,Your heart, our heart, is sound at core.THE OLD VILLAGE
IT lies among the greenest hillsNew England’s depths can show;About their base the river fillsAnd empties as the distant millsControl its ebb and flow:It had a quick life of its own,But that was long ago.Two centuries have rolled awaySince a small, hardy bandTurned their sad faces from the bay,The dim sky-line where England lay,And boldly marched inland.Before them lay the wilderness,Behind them lay the strand.Bravely they plunged into the wasteBy white foot never trod;Bravely and busily they tracedThe village boundaries, and placedTheir ploughs in virgin sod;Built huts, and then a meeting-houseWhere man might worship God.The huts gave place to houses white;The axe-affrighted woodsShrank back to left, shrank back to right;The valleys laughed with harvest light;The river’s vagrant moodsWere curbed by clattering wheels, which shookThe once green solitudes.And years flowed on, and life flowed by.The hills were named and known.The young looked out with eager eyeFrom the “old” village; by and byThey stole forth one by one,Leaving the old folks in their homesTo labor on alone.And one by one the old folks died,Each in his lonely way.The doors which once stood open wide,To let a busy human tideSweep in and out all day,Were closed; the unseeing windows staredJust as a blind man may.The mills, abandoned, ceased to whir;The unchecked river ranIts old-time courses, merrier,And glad in spirit, as it were,For its escape from man,Teased the dumb wheels, and mocked and playedAs only a river can.Looking to-day across the space,Beyond the flower-fringed trackWhich once was road, the eye can traceThe outlines of a cellar-place,A half-burned chimney-back:They mark the ruins of a homeNow empty, cold, and black.And here and there an old dame standsSome farm-house window nigh,Or, dark against the pasture-lands,A ploughman old, with trembling hands,Checks his team suddenly,And turns a gray head to the roadTo watch the passer-by.Above the empty village liesOne thickly peopled spot,Where gray stones in gray silence rise,And tell to sunset and sunriseOf past lives that are not, —The lives that fought and strove and toiledAnd builded. And for what?’Tis Nature’s law in everything.The river seeks the sea;But not one droplet wanderingGoes ever back to feed the spring.Such things are and must be.The gone is gone, the lost is lost,Fled irrevocably.Old village on the lonely hill,Deserted by your own,Your spended lifelike mountain rillHas gone to swell the tide and fillSome sea unseen, unknown.Let this brave thought your comfort be,As thus you die alone.A GREETING
OH, dear and friendly Death,End of my road, however long it be,Waiting with hospitable hands stretched outAnd full of gifts for me!Why do we call thee foe,Clouding with darksome mists thy face divine?Life, she was sweet, but poor her largess seemsWhen matched with thine.Thy amaranthine bloomsAre not less lovely than her rose of joy;And the rare, subtle perfumes which they breatheNever the senses cloy.Thou holdest in thy storeFull satisfaction of all doubt, replyTo question, and the golden clews to dreamsWhich idly passed us by.Darkness to tired eyes,Perplexed with vision, blinded with long day;Quiet to busy hands, glad to fold upAnd lay their work away.A balm for anguish past,Rest to the long unrest which smiles did hide;The recognitions thirsted for in vain,And still by life denied.A nearness, all unknownWhile in these stifling, prisoning bodies pent,Unto thy soul and mine, beloved, made oneAt last in full content.Thou bringest me mine own,The garnered flowers which felt thy sickle keen,And the full vision of that Face divine,Which I have loved unseen.Oh, dear and friendly Death,End of my road, however long it be,Nearing me day by day, I still can smileWhene’er I think of thee!CHANGELESS
WE say, “The sun has set,” and we sorrow soreAs we watch the darkness creep the landscape o’er,And the thick shadows fall, and the night draw on;And we mourn for the brightness lost, and the vanished sun.And all the time the sun in the self-same placeWaits, ready to clasp the earth in his embrace,Ready to give to all of his stintless ray;And ’tis we who have “set,” it is we who have turned away!“The Lord has hidden his face,” we sadly cry,As we sit in the night of grief with no helper by.“Guiding uncounted worlds in their courses dim,How should our little pain be marked by him?”But all the while that we mourn, the Lord stands near,And the Son divine is waiting to help and hear;And ’tis we who hide our faces, and blindly turn away,While the Sun of the soul shines on mid the perfect day.EASTER
FLOWERS die not in the winter-tide,Although they wake in spring;Pillowed ’neath mounds of fleecy snow,While skies are gray and storm-winds blow,All patiently they bide,Fettered by frost, and bravely wait,And trust in spring or soon or late.Hope dies not in the winter-tide,Though sore it longs for spring;Cool morn may ripen to hot noon,And evening dusks creep all too soonThe noonday sun to hide;But through the night there stir and thrillThe sleeping strengths of life and will.For souls there comes a winter-tide,For souls there blooms a spring;Though winter days may linger long,And snows be deep and frosts be strong,And faith be sorely tried,When Christ shall shine, who is the Sun,Spring-time shall be for every one.Oh, mighty Lord of winter-tide!Oh, loving Lord of spring!Come to our hearts this Easter Day,Melt all the prisoning ice away,And evermore abide,Making both good and ill to beThy blessed opportunity.THE WORLD IS VAST
THE world is vast and we are small,We are so weak and it so strong,Onward it goes, nor cares at allFor us, – our silence or our song,Our fast-day or our festival.We tremble as we feel it swayBeneath our feet as on we fare;But, like a ball which children play,God spins it through the far blue air.We are his own; why should we care?