And I have not now the light to see what is in me the same alway!”
V
Nay, rather I’ll say: “I am a nut in the hard and frozen ground;
Above is the damp and frozen air, the cold blue sky all round;
And the power of a leafy and branchy tree is in me crushed and bound
Till the summer come and set it free from the grave-clothes
in which it is wound!”
VI
But I bethink me of something better!—something better, yea best!
“I am lying a voiceless, featherless thing in God’s own perfect nest;
And the voice and the song are growing within me, slowly lifting my
breast;
And his wide night-wings are closed about me, for his sun is down in the
west!”
VII
Doors and windows, tents and grave-clothes, winters and eggs and seeds,
Ye shall all be opened and broken and torn; ye are but to serve my needs!
On the will of the Father all lovely things are strung like a string of
beads
For his heart to give the obedient child that the will of the father
heeds.
Song-Prayer
After King David
I shall be satisfied
With the seeing of thy face.
When I awake, wide-eyed,
I shall be satisfied
With what this life did hide,
The one supernal grace!
I shall be satisfied
With the seeing of thy face.
December 27, 1879
Every time would have its song
If the heart were right,
Seeing Love all tender-strong
Fills the day and night.
Weary drop the hands of Prayer
Calling out for peace;
Love always and everywhere
Sings and does not cease.
Fear, the caitiff, through the night
Silent peers about;
Love comes singing with a light
And doth cast him out.
Hate and Guile and Wrath and Doubt
Never try to sing;
If they did, oh, what a rout
Anguished ears would sting!
Pride indeed will sometimes aim
At the finer speech,
But the best that he can frame
Is a peacock-screech.
Greed will also sometimes try:
Happiness he hunts!
But his dwelling is a sty,
And his tones are grunts.
Faith will sometimes raise a song
Soaring up to heaven,
Then she will be silent long,
And will weep at even.
Hope has many a gladsome note
Now and then to pipe;
But, alas, he has the throat
Of a bird unripe.
Often Joy a stave will start
Which the welkin rends,
But it always breaks athwart,
And untimely ends.
Grief, who still for death doth long,
Always self-abhorred,
Has but one low, troubled song,
“I am sorry, Lord.”
But Love singeth in the vault.
Singeth on the stair;
Even for Sorrow will not halt,
Singeth everywhere.
For the great Love everywhere
Over all doth glow;
Draws his birds up trough the air,
Tends his birds below.
And with songs ascending sheer
Love-born Love replies,
Singing “Father” in his ear
Where she bleeding lies.
Therefore, if my heart were right
I should sing out clear,
Sing aloud both day and night
Every month in the year!
Sunday, December 28, 1879
A dim, vague shrinking haunts my soul,
My spirit bodeth ill—
As some far-off restraining bank
Had burst, and waters, many a rank,
Were marching on my hill;
As if I had no fire within
For thoughts to sit about;
As if I had no flax to spin,
No lamp to lure the good things in
And keep the bad things out.
The wind, south-west, raves in the pines
That guard my cottage round;
The sea-waves fall in stormy lines
Below the sandy cliffs and chines,
And swell the roaring sound.
The misty air, the bellowing wind
Not often trouble me;
The storm that’s outside of the mind
Doth oftener wake my heart to find
More peace and liberty.
Why is not such my fate to-night?
Chance is not lord of things!
Man were indeed a hapless wight
Things, thoughts occurring as they might—
Chaotic wallowings!
The man of moods might merely say
As by the fire he sat,
“I am low spirited to-day;
I must do something, work or play,
Lest care should kill the cat!”
Not such my saw: I was not meant
To be the sport of things!
The mood has meaning and intent,
And my dull heart is humbly bent
To have the truth it brings.
This sense of needed shelter round,
This frequent mental start
Show what a poor life mine were found,
To what a dead self I were bound,
How feeble were my heart,
If I who think did stand alone
Centre to what I thought,
A brain within a box of bone,
A king on a deserted throne,
A something that was nought!
A being without power to be,
Or any power to cease;
Whom objects but compelled to see,
Whose trouble was a windblown sea,
A windless sea his peace!
This very sadness makes me think
How readily I might
Be driven to reason’s farthest brink,
Then over it, and sudden sink
In ghastly waves of night.
It makes me know when I am glad
’Tis thy strength makes me strong;
But for thy bliss I should be sad,
But for thy reason should be mad,
But for thy right be wrong.
Around me spreads no empty waste,
No lordless host of things;
My restlessness but seeks thy rest;
My little good doth seek thy best,
My needs thy ministerings.
’Tis this, this only makes me safe—
I am, immediate,
Of one that lives; I am no waif
That haggard waters toss and chafe,
But of a royal fate,
The born-child of a Power that lives
Because it will and can,
A Love whose slightest motion gives,
A Freedom that forever strives
To liberate his Man.
I live not on the circling air,
Live not by daily food;
I live not even by thinkings fair,
I hold my very being there
Where God is pondering good.
Because God lives I live; because
He thinks, I also think;
I am dependent on no laws
But on himself, and without pause;
Between us hangs no link.
The man that lives he knows not how
May well fear any mouse!
I should be trembling this same now
If I did think, my Father, thou
Wast nowhere in the house!
O Father, lift me on thine arm,
And hold me close to thee;
Lift me into thy breathing warm,
Then cast me, and I fear no harm,
Into creation’s sea!
Song-Sermon
In His Arms Thy Silly Lamb
In his arms thy silly lamb,
Lo, he gathers to his breast!
See, thou sadly bleating dam,
See
