Chapter V

And fear to sorrow with increase of grief,
When they who go before
Go furnished--or because their span was brief,
When in the acquist of what is life’s true gage,
Truth, knowledge, and that other worthiest lore,
They had fulfilled already a long age.
For doubt not but that in the worlds above
There must be other offices of love,
That other tasks and ministries there are,
Since it is promised that His servants, there
Shall serve him still. Therefore be strong, be strong,
Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,
Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,
But do the works that unto you belong,
Believing that for every mystery,
For all the death the darkness and the curse
Of this dim universe,
Needs a solution full of love must be:
And that the way whereby ye may attain
Nearest to this, is not thro’ broodings vain
And half-rebellious--questionings of God,
But by a patient seeking to fulfil
The purpose of his everlasting will,
Treading the way which lowly men have trod.
Since it is ever they who are too proud
For this, that are the foremost and most loud
To judge his hidden judgments, these are still
The most perplexed and mazed at his mysterious will.”

SONNET.

When I have sometimes read of precious things,
The precious things of earth, which yet are vile,
Together heaped into the graves of kings,
Or wasted with them on their funeral pile,
Steeds arms and costly vestments and the dross
Which men call gold, feeding one ravenous pyre,
I have been little moved at all the loss
Of all the treasure which fond men admire.
But when I hear of some too early doom,
Snatching wit wisdom valour grace away,
Or our own loss has taught me what the tomb
May cover from us, then I feel and say
That earth has things whereon the grave may feed,
And feeding may make poor the world indeed.

SONNET.

What is the greatness of a fallen king?
This--that his fall avails not to abate
His spirit to a level with his fate,
Or inward fall along with it to bring;
That he disdains to stoop his former wing,
But keeps in exile and in want the law
Of kingship yet, and counts it scorn to draw
Comfort indign from any meaner thing.
Soul, that art fallen from thine ancient place,
Mayest thou in this mean world find nothing great,
Nor aught that shall the memories efface
Of that true greatness which was once thine own,
As knowing thou must keep thy kingly state,
If thou wouldst reascend thy kingly throne.

NEW YEAR’S EVE.

The strong in spiritual action need not look
Upon the new-found year as on a scroll,
The which their hands lack cunning to unroll,
But in it read, as in an open book,
All they are seeking--high resolve unshook
By circumstance’s unforeseen control,
Successful striving, and whate’er the soul
Has recognised for duty, not forsook.
But they whom many failures have made tame,
Question the future with that reverent fear,
Which best their need of heav’nly aid may shew.
Will it have purer thought, and loftier aim
Pursued more loftily? That a man might know
What thou wilt bring him, thou advancing year!

TO MY CHILD.

Thy gladness makes me thankful every way,
To look upon thy gladness makes me glad;
While yet in part it well might render sad
Us thinking that we too might sport and play,
And keep like thee continual holiday,
If we retained the things which once we had,
If we like happy Neophytes were clad
Still in baptismal stoles of white array.
And yet the gladness of the innocent child
Has not more matter for our thankful glee
Than the dim sorrows of the man defiled;
Since both in sealing one blest truth agree--
Joy is of God, but heaviness and care
Of our own hearts and what has harboured there.

SONNET.

An open wound that has been healed anew;
A stream dried up, that once again is fed
With waters making green its grassy bed;
A tree that withered was, but to the dew
Puts forth young leaves and blossoms fresh of hue,
Even from the branches which had seemed most dead;
A sea which having been disquieted,
Now stretches like a mirror calm and blue,--
Our hearts to each of these were likened well.
But Thou wert the physician and the balm;
Thou, Lord, the fountain, whence anew was filled
Their parchèd channel; Thou the dew that fell
On their dead branches; ’twas thy voice that stilled
The storm within--Thou didst command the calm.

SONNET.

IN A PASS OF BAVARIA BETWEEN THE WALCHEN AND THE WALDENSEE.

“His voice was as the sound of many waters.”

A sound of many waters--now I know
To what was likened the large utterance sent
By Him who ’mid the golden lampads went:
Innumerable streams, above, below,
Some seen, some heard alone, with headlong flow
Come rushing; some with smooth and sheer descent,
Some dashed to foam and whiteness, but all blent
Into one mighty music. As I go,
The tumult of a boundless gladness fills
My bosom, and my spirit leaps and sings:
Sounds and sights are there of the ancient hills,
The eagle’s cry, or when the mountain flings
Mists from its brow, but none of all these things
Like the one voice of multitudinous rills.

SONNET.

What is thy worship but a vain pretence,
Spirit of Beauty, and a servile trade,
A poor and an unworthy traffic made
With the most sacred gifts of soul and sense;
If they who tend thine altars, gathering thence
No strength, no purity, may still remain
Selfish and dark, and from Life’s sordid stain
Find in their ministrations no defence?
Thus many times I ask, when aught of mean
Or sensual has been brought unto mine ear,
Of them whose calling high is to insphere
Eternal Beauty in forms of human art--
Vexed that my soul should ever moved have been
By that which has such feigning at the heart.

SONNET.

Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent;
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,
In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free
From outward hindrance or impediment.
For presently this hindrance thou shalt find
That without which all goodness were a task
So slight, that Virtue never could grow strong:
And wouldst thou do one duty to His mind,
The Imposer’s--over-burdened thou shalt ask,
And own thy need of grace to help, ere long.

TO MY GOD-CHILD,

ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

No harsh transitions Nature knows,
No dreary spaces intervene;
Her work in silence forward goes,
And rather felt than seen.

For where the watcher, that with eye
Turned eastward, yet could ever say
When the faint glooming in the sky
First lightened into day?

Or maiden, by an opening flower
That many a summer morn has stood,
Could fix upon the very hour
It ceased to be a bud?

The rainbow colours mix and blend
Each with the other, until none
Can tell where fainter hues had end,
And deeper tints begun.

But only doth this much appear--
That the pale hues are deeper grown;
The day has broken bright and clear;
The bud is fully blown.

Dear child, and happy shalt thou be,
If from this hour, with just increase
All good things shall grow up in thee,
By such unmarked degrees.

If there shall be no dreary space
Between thy present self and past,
No dreary miserable place
With spectral shapes aghast;

But the full graces of thy prime
Shall, in their weak beginnings, be
Lost in an unremembered time
Of holy infancy.

This blessing is the first and best;
Yet has not prayer been made in vain
For them, tho’ not so amply blest,
The lost and found again.

And shouldest thou, alas! forbear
To choose the better, nobler lot,
Yet may we not esteem our prayer
Unheard or heeded not;

If after many a wandering,
And many a devious pathway trod;
If having known that bitter thing,
To leave the Lord thy God,

It yet shall be, that thou at last,
Altho’ thy noon be lost, return
To bind life’s eve in union fast
To this, its blessed morn.

THE MONK AND BIRD.