Of all dismay, and every weak excess.
His presence shall be better in our pain,
Than even self-absence to the weaker brain.
29
“Father, let this cup pass.” He prayed—was heard.
What cup was it that passed away from him?
Sure not the death-cup, now filled to the brim!
There was no quailing in the awful word;
He still was king of kings, of lords the lord:—
He feared lest, in the suffering waste and grim,
His faith might grow too faint and sickly dim.
30
Thy mind, my master, I will dare explore;
What we are told, that we are meant to know.
Into thy soul I search yet more and more,
Led by the lamp of my desire and woe.
If thee, my Lord, I may not understand,
I am a wanderer in a houseless land,
A weeping thirst by hot winds ever fanned.
31
Therefore I look again—and think I see
That, when at last he did cry out, “My God,
Why hast thou me forsaken?” straight man’s rod
Was turned aside; for, that same moment, he
Cried “Father!” and gave up will and breath and spirit
Into his hands whose all he did inherit—
Delivered, glorified eternally.
April
1
Lord, I do choose the higher than my will.
I would be handled by thy nursing arms
After thy will, not my infant alarms.
Hurt me thou wilt—but then more loving still,
If more can be and less, in love’s perfect zone!
My fancy shrinks from least of all thy harms,
But do thy will with me—I am thine own.
2
Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?
Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?
The thing that painful, more than should be, seems,
Shall not thy sliding years with them retract—
Shall fair realities not counteract?
The thing that was well dreamed of bliss and joy—
Wilt thou not breathe thy life into the toy?
3
I have had dreams of absolute delight,
Beyond all waking bliss—only of grass,
Flowers, wind, a peak, a limb of marble white;
They dwell with me like things half come to pass,
True prophecies:—when I with thee am right,
If I pray, waking, for such a joy of sight,
Thou with the gold, wilt not refuse the brass.
4
I think I shall not ever pray for such;
Thy bliss will overflood my heart and brain,
And I want no unripe things back again.
Love ever fresher, lovelier than of old—
How should it want its more exchanged for much?
Love will not backward sigh, but forward strain,
On in the tale still telling, never told.
5
What has been, shall not only be, but is.
The hues of dreamland, strange and sweet and tender
Are but hint-shadows of full many a splendour
Which the high Parent-love will yet unroll
Before his child’s obedient, humble soul.
Ah, me, my God! in thee lies every bliss
Whose shadow men go hunting wearily amiss.
6
Now, ere I sleep, I wonder what I shall dream.
Some sense of being, utter new, may come
Into my soul while I am blind and dumb—
With shapes and airs and scents which dark hours teem,
Of other sort than those that haunt the day,
Hinting at precious things, ages away
In the long tale of us God to himself doth say.
7
Late, in a dream, an unknown lady I saw
Stand on a tomb; down she to me stepped thence.
“They tell me,” quoth I, “thou art one of the dead!”
And scarce believed for gladness the yea she said;
A strange auroral bliss, an arctic awe,
A new, outworldish joy awoke intense,
To think I talked with one that verily was dead.
8
Thou dost demand our love, holy Lord Christ,
And batest nothing of thy modesty;—
Thou know’st no other way to bliss the highest
Than loving thee, the loving, perfectly.
Thou lovest perfectly—that is thy bliss:
We must love like thee, or our being miss—
So, to love perfectly, love perfect Love, love thee.
9
Here is my heart, O Christ; thou know’st I love thee.
But wretched is the thing I call my love.
O Love divine, rise up in me and move me—
I follow surely when thou first dost move.
To love the perfect love, is primal, mere
Necessity; and he who holds life dear,
Must love thee every hope and heart above.
10
Might I but scatter interfering things—
Questions and doubts, distrusts and anxious pride,
And in thy garment, as under gathering wings,
Nestle obedient to thy loving side,
Easy it were to love thee. But when thou
Send’st me to think and labour from thee wide,
Love falls to asking many a why and how.
11
Easier it were, but poorer were the love.
Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps—
Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness.
Through seething wastes below, billows above,
My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps;
Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press—
Out of my dream to him who slumbers not nor sleeps.
12
I do not fear the greatness of thy command—
To keep heart-open-house to brother men;
But till in thy God’s love perfect I stand,
My door not wide enough will open. Then
Each man will be love-awful in my sight;
And, open to the eternal morning’s might,
Each human face will shine my window for thy light.
13
Make me all patience and all diligence;
Patience, that thou mayst have thy time with me;
Diligence, that I waste not thy expense
In sending out to bring me home to thee.
What though thy work in me transcends my sense—
Too fine, too high, for me to understand—
I hope entirely. On, Lord, with thy labour grand.
14
Lest I be humbled at the last, and told
That my great labour was but for my peace
That not for love or truth had I been bold,
But merely for a prisoned heart’s release;
Careful, I humble me now before thy feet:
Whate’er I be, I cry, and will not cease—
Let me not perish, though favour be not meet.
15
For, what I seek thou knowest I must find,
Or miserably die for lack of love.
I justify thee: what is in thy mind,
If it be shame to me, all shame above.
Thou know’st I choose it—know’st I would not shove
The hand away that stripped me for the rod—
If so it pleased my Life, my love-made-angry God.
16
I see a door, a multitude near by,
In creed and quarrel, sure disciples all!
Gladly they would, they say, enter the hall,
But cannot, the stone threshold is so high.
From unseen hand, full many
