living tears! Go down into the felon’s gloomy cell; Send there the ray of love: as tree-buds swell When spring’s warm breath bids the cold winter cease, So will his heart swell with the hope of peace. Be filled with love, for love is Nature’s God; The God which trembles in the tender sod, The God which tints the sunset, lights the dew, Sprinkles with stars the firmament’s broad blue, And draws all hearts together in a free Wide sweep of love, broad as the ether-sea. No other law or guidance do we need; The world’s our church, to do good is our creed.
To My Mother
Some souls there are which never live their life; Some suns there are which never pierce their cloud; Some hearts there are which cup their perfume in, And yield no incense to the outer air. Cloud-shrouded, flower-cupped heart: such is thine own: So dost thou live with all thy brightness hid; So dost thou dwell with all thy perfume close; Rich in thy treasured wealth, aye, rich indeed— And they are wrong who say thou “dost not feel.” But I—I need blue air and opened bloom; To keep my music means that it must die; And when the thrill, the joy, the love of life is gone, I, too, am dead—a corpse, though not entombed. Let me live then—but a while—the gloom soon comes, The flower closes and the petals shut; Through them the perfume slips out, like a soul— The long, still sleep of death—and then the Grave.
Betrayed
So, you’re the chaplain! You needn’t say what you have come for; I can guess. You’ve come to talk about Jesus’ love, and repentance and rest and forgiveness! You’ve come to say that my sin is great, yet greater the mercy Heaven will mete, If I, like Magdalen, bend my head, and pour my tears at your Saviour’s feet. Your promise is fair, but I’ve little faith: I relied on promises once before; They brought me to this—this prison cell, with its iron-barred window, its grated door! Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes; And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of Paradise. And he seemed to me all that was good and pure, and noble and strong, and true and brave! I had given the pulse of my heart for him, and deemed it a precious boon to crave.
You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin: It isn’t redeemed, or no one could be so fair without, and so black within. I trusted his promise, I gave my life;—the truth of my love is known on high, If there is a God who knows all things;—his promise was false, his love was a lie! It was over soon, Oh! soon, the dream—and me, he had called “his life,” “his light,” He drove me away with a sneering word, and you Christians said that “it served me right.” I was proud, Mr. Chaplain, even then; I set my face in the teeth of Fate, And resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate. Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross, And put something here, where my heart had been, to fill up the aching void of loss.
It’s easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard Is the way that you Christians make for us, with your “sin no more,” “trust the Lord.” When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness, or open sneer, You get so you don’t trust a far-off God, whose creatures are cold, and they, so near. You hold your virtuous lives aloof, and refuse us your human help and hand, And set us apart as accursèd things, marked with a burning, Cain-like brand.
But I didn’t bend, though many days I was weary and hungry, and worn and weak, And for many a starless night I watched, through tears that grooved down my pallid cheek. They are all dry now! They say I’m hard, because I never weep or moan! You can’t draw blood when the heart’s bled out! you can’t find tears or sound in a stone! And I don’t know why I should be mild and meek: no one has been very mild to me. You say that Jesus would be—perhaps! but Heaven’s a long way off, you see.
That will do; I know what you’re going to say: “I can have it right here in this narrow cell.” The soul is slow to accept Christ’s heav’n when his followers chain the body in hell. Not but I’m just as well off here—better, perhaps, than I was outside. The world was a prison-house to me, where I dwelt, defying and defied.
I don’t know but I’d think more of what you say, if they’d given us both a common lot; If justice to me had been justice to him, and covered our names with an equal blot; But they took him into the social court, and pitied, and said he’d been “led astray”; In a month the stain on his name had passed, as a cloud that crosses the face of day! He joined the Church, and he’s preaching now, just as you are, the love of God, And the duty of sinners to kneel and pray, and humbly to kiss the chastening rod. If they’d dealt with me as they dealt by him, may be I’d credit your Christian love; If they’d dealt with him as they dealt by me, I’d have more faith in a just Above.
I don’t know, but sometimes I used to think that she, who was told there was no room In the inn at Bethlehem, might look down with softened eyes thro’ the starless gloom. Christ wasn’t a woman—he couldn’t know the pain and endurance of it; but she, The mother who bore him, she might know, and Mary in Heaven might pity me. Still that was useless: it didn’t bring a single mouthful for me to eat, Nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street. Heavenly pity won’t pass as coin,
