Art thou not each man’s God—his own,
With secret words between,
As thou and he lived all alone,
Insphered in silence keen?
Ah, God, my heart is not the same
As any heart beside;
My pain is different, and my blame,
My pity and my pride!
My history thou know’st, my thoughts
Different from other men’s;
Thou knowest all the sheep and goats
That mingle in my pens.
Thou knowest I a love might bring
By none beside me due;
One praiseful song at least might sing
Which could not but be new.
XXIII
Nor seek I thus to stand apart,
In aught my kind above;
My neighbour, ah, my troubled heart
Must rest ere thee it love!
If God love not, I have no care,
No power to love, no hope.
What is life here or anywhere?
Or why with darkness cope?
I scorn my own love’s every sign,
So feeble, selfish, low,
If his love give no pledge that mine
Shall one day perfect grow.
But if I knew Thy love even such,
As tender and intense
As, tested by its human touch,
Would satisfy my sense
Of what a father never was
But should be to his son,
My heart would leap for joy, because
My rescue was begun.
Oh then my love, by thine set free,
Would overflow thy men;
In every face my heart would see
God shining out again!
There are who hold high festival
And at the board crown Death:
I am too weak to live at all
Except I breathe thy breath.
Show me a love that nothing bates,
Absolute, self-severe—
Even at Gehenna’s prayerless gates
I should not “taint with fear.”
XXIV
I cannot brook that men should say—
Nor this for gospel take—
That thou wilt hear me if I pray
Asking for Jesus’ sake.
For love to him is not to me,
And cannot lift my fate;
The love is not that is not free,
Perfect, immediate.
Love is salvation: life without
No moment can endure.
Those sheep alone go in and out
Who know thy love is pure.
XXV
But what if God requires indeed,
For cause yet unrevealed,
Assent to one fixed form of creed,
Such as I cannot yield?
Has God made for Christ’s sake a test—
To take or leave the crust,
That only he may have the best
Who licks the serpent-dust?
No, no; the words I will not say
With the responding folk;
I at his feet a heart would lay,
Not shoulders for a yoke.
He were no lord of righteousness
Who subjects such would gain
As yield their birthright for a mess
Of liberty from pain!
“And wilt thou bargain then with Him?”
The priest makes answer high.
’Tis thou, priest, makest the sky dim:
My hope is in the sky.
XXVI
But is my will alive, awake?
The one God will not heed
If in my lips or hands I take
A half-word or half-deed.
Hour after hour I sit and dream,
Amazed in outwardness;
The powers of things that only seem
The things that are oppress;
Till in my soul some discord sounds,
Till sinks some yawning lack;
Then turn I from life’s rippling rounds,
And unto thee come back.
Thou seest how poor a thing am I,
Yet hear, whate’er I be;
Despairing of my will, I cry,
Be God enough to me.
My spirit, low, irresolute,
I cast before thy feet;
And wait, while even prayer is mute,
For what thou judgest meet.
XXVII
My safety lies not, any hour,
In what I generate,
But in the living, healing power
Of that which doth create.
If he is God to the incomplete,
Fulfilling lack and need,
Then I may cast before his feet
A half-word or half-deed.
I bring, Lord, to thy altar-stair,
To thee, love-glorious,
My very lack of will and prayer,
And cry—Thou seest me thus!
From some old well of life they flow!
The words my being fill!—
“Of me that man the truth shall know
Who wills the Father’s will.”
XXVIII
What is his will?—that I may go
And do it, in the hope
That light will rise and spread and grow,
As deed enlarges scope.
I need not search the sacred book
To find my duty clear;
Scarce in my bosom need I look,
It lies so very near.
Henceforward I must watch the door
Of word and action too;
There’s one thing I must do no more,
Another I must do.
Alas, these are such little things!
No glory in their birth!
Doubt from their common aspect springs—
If God will count them worth.
But here I am not left to choose,
My duty is my lot;
And weighty things will glory lose
If small ones are forgot.
I am not worthy high things yet;
I’ll humbly do my own;
Good care of sheep may so beget
A fitness for the throne.
Ah fool! why dost thou reason thus?
Ambition’s very fool!
Through high and low, each glorious,
Shines God’s all-perfect rule.
’Tis God I need, not rank in good:
’Tis Life, not honour’s meed;
With him to fill my every mood,
I am content indeed.
XXIX
Will do: shall know: I feel the force,
The fullness of the word;
His holy boldness held its course,
Claiming divine accord.
What if, as yet, I have never seen
The true face of the Man!
The named notion may have been
A likeness vague and wan;
A thing of such unblended hues
As, on his chamber wall,
The humble peasant gladly views,
And Jesus Christ doth call.
The story I did never scan
With vision calm and strong;
Have never tried to see the Man,
The many words among.
Pictures there are that do not please
With any sweet surprise,
But gain the heart by slow degrees
Until they feast the eyes;
And if I ponder what they call
The gospel of God’s grace,
Through mists that slowly melt and fall
May dawn a human face.
What face? Oh, heart-uplifting thought,
That face may dawn on me
Which Moses on the mountain sought,
God would not let him see!
XXX
All faint at first, as wrapt in veil
Of Sinai’s cloudy dark,
But dawning as I read the tale,
I slow discern and mark
A gracious, simple, truthful man,
Who walks the earth erect,
Nor stoops his noble head to one
From fear or false respect;
Who seeks to climb no high estate,
No low consent secure,
With
