The Puritans of New England, even in their wilderness home, were not exempted from the sectarian contentions which agitated the mother country after the downfall of Charles the First, and of the established Episcopacy. The Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were banished, on pain of death, from the Massachusetts Colony. One Samuel Gorton, a bold and eloquent declaimer, after preaching for a time in Boston against the doctrines of the Puritans, and declaring that their churches were mere human devices, and their sacrament and baptism an abomination, was driven out of the jurisdiction of the colony, and compelled to seek a residence among the savages. He gathered round him a considerable number of converts, who, like the primitive Christians, shared all things in common. His opinions, however, were so troublesome to the leading clergy of the colony, that they instigated an attack upon his "Family" by an armed force, which seized upon the principal men in it, and brought them into Massachusetts, where they were sentenced to be kept at hard labor in several towns (one only in each town), during the pleasure of the General Court, they being forbidden, under severe penalties, to utter any of their religious sentiments, except to such ministers as might labor for their conversion. They were unquestionably sincere in their opinions, and, whatever may have been their errors, deserve to be ranked among those who have in all ages suffered for the freedom of conscience.
Father! to Thy suffering poorStrength and grace and faith impart,And with Thy own love restoreComfort to the broken heart!Oh, the failing ones confirmWith a holier strength of zeal!Give Thou not the feeble wormHelpless to the spoiler's heel!Father! for Thy holy sakeWe are spoiled and hunted thus;Joyful, for Thy truth we takeBonds and burthens unto usPoor, and weak, and robbed of all,Weary with our daily task,That Thy truth may never fallThrough our weakness, Lord, we ask.Round our fired and wasted homesFlits the forest-bird unscared,And at noon the wild beast comesWhere our frugal meal was shared;For the song of praises thereShrieks the crow the livelong day;For the sound of evening prayerHowls the evil beast of prey!Sweet the songs we loved to singUnderneath Thy holy sky;Words and tones that used to bringTears of joy in every eye;Dear the wrestling hours of prayer,When we gathered knee to knee,Blameless youth and hoary hair,Bowed, O God, alone to Thee.As Thine early children, Lord,Shared their wealth and daily bread,Even so, with one accord,We, in love, each other fed.Not with us the miser's hoard,Not with us his grasping hand;Equal round a common board,Drew our meek and brother band!Safe our quiet Eden layWhen the war-whoop stirred the landAnd the Indian turned awayFrom our home his bloody hand.Well that forest-ranger saw,That the burthen and the curseOf the white man's cruel lawRested also upon us.Torn apart, and driven forthTo our toiling hard and long,Father! from the dust of earthLift we still our grateful song!Grateful, that in bonds we shareIn Thy love which maketh free;Joyful, that the wrongs we bear,Draw us nearer, Lord, to Thee!Grateful! that where'er we toil,—By Wachuset's wooded side,On Nantucket's sea-worn isle,Or by wild Neponset's tide,—Still, in spirit, we are near,And our evening hymns, which riseSeparate and discordant here,Meet and mingle in the skies!Let the scoffer scorn and mock,Let the proud and evil priestRob the needy of his flock,For his wine-cup and his feast,—Redden not Thy bolts in storeThrough the blackness of Thy skies?For the sighing of the poorWilt Thou not, at length, arise?Worn and wasted, oh! how longShall thy trodden poor complain?In Thy name they bear the wrong,In Thy cause the bonds of pain!Melt oppression's heart of steel,Let the haughty priesthood see,And their blinded followers feel,That in us they mock at Thee!In Thy time, O Lord of hosts,Stretch abroad that hand to saveWhich of old, on Egypt's coasts,Smote apart the Red Sea's waveLead us from this evil land,From the spoiler set us free,And once more our gathered band,Heart to heart, shall worship Thee!1838.
Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they skew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not. And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them.— EZEKIEL, xxxiii. 30-33.
They hear Thee not, O God! nor see;Beneath Thy rod they mock at Thee;The princes of our ancient lineLie drunken with Assyrian wine;The priests around Thy altar speakThe false words which their hearers seek;And hymns which Chaldea's wanton maidsHave sung in Dura's idol-shadesAre with the Levites' chant ascending,With Zion's holiest anthems blending!On Israel's bleeding bosom set,The heathen heel is crushing yet;The towers upon our holy hillEcho Chaldean footsteps still.Our wasted shrines,—who weeps for them?Who mourneth for Jerusalem?Who turneth from his gains away?Whose knee with mine is bowed to pray?Who, leaving feast and purpling cup,Takes Zion's lamentation up?A sad and thoughtful youth, I wentWith Israel's early banishment;And where the sullen Chebar crept,The ritual of my fathers kept.The water for the trench I drew,The firstling of the flock I slew,And, standing at the altar's side,I shared the Levites' lingering pride,That still, amidst her mocking foes,The smoke of Zion's offering rose.In sudden whirlwind, cloud and flame,The Spirit of the Highest came!Before mine eyes a vision passed,A glory terrible and vast;With dreadful eyes of living things,And sounding sweep of angel wings,With circling light and sapphire throne,And flame-like form of One thereon,And voice of that dread Likeness sentDown from the crystal firmament!The burden of a prophet's powerFell on me in that fearful hour;From off unutterable woesThe curtain of the future rose;I saw far down the coming timeThe fiery chastisement of crime;With noise of mingling hosts, and jarOf falling towers and shouts of war,I saw the nations rise and fall,Like fire-gleams on my tent's white wall.In dream and trance, I—saw the slainOf Egypt heaped like harvest grain.I saw the walls of sea-born TyreSwept over by the spoiler's fire;And heard the low, expiring moanOf Edom on his rocky throne;And, woe is me! the wild lamentFrom Zion's desolation sent;And felt within my heart each blowWhich laid her holy places low.In bonds and sorrow, day by day,Before the pictured tile I lay;And there, as in a mirror, sawThe coming of Assyria's war;Her swarthy lines of spearmen passLike locusts through Bethhoron's grass;I saw them draw their stormy hemOf battle round Jerusalem;And, listening, heard the Hebrew wail!Blend with the victor-trump of Baal!Who trembled at my warning word?Who owned the prophet of the Lord?How mocked the rude, how scoffed the vile,How stung the Levites' scornful smile,As o'er my spirit, dark and slow,The shadow crept of Israel's woeAs if the angel's mournful rollHad left its record on my soul,And traced in lines of darkness thereThe picture of its great despair!Yet ever at the hour I feelMy lips in prophecy unseal.Prince, priest, and Levite gather near,And Salem's daughters haste to hear,On Chebar's waste and alien shore,The harp of Judah swept once more.They listen, as in Babel's throngThe Chaldeans to the dancer's song,Or wild sabbeka's nightly play,—As careless and as vain as they.. . . . .And thus, O Prophet-bard of old,Hast thou thy tale of sorrow toldThe same which earth's unwelcome seersHave felt in all succeeding years.Sport of the changeful multitude,Nor calmly heard nor understood,Their song has seemed a trick of art,Their warnings but, the actor's part.With bonds, and scorn, and evil will,The world requites its prophets still.So was it when the Holy OneThe garments of the flesh put onMen followed where the Highest ledFor common gifts of daily bread,And gross of ear, of vision dim,Owned not the Godlike power of Him.Vain as a dreamer's words to themHis wail above Jerusalem,And meaningless the watch He keptThrough which His weak disciples slept.Yet shrink not thou, whoe'er thou art,For God's great purpose set apart,Before whose far-discerning eyes,The Future as the Present lies!Beyond a narrow-bounded ageStretches thy prophet-heritage,Through Heaven's vast spaces angel-trod,And through the eternal years of GodThy audience, worlds!—all things to beThe witness of the Truth in thee!1844.
MADDENED by Earth's wrong and evil,"Lord!" I cried in sudden ire,"From Thy right hand, clothed with thunder,Shake the bolted fire!"Love is lost, and Faith is dying;With the brute the man is sold;And the dropping blood of laborHardens into gold."Here the dying wail of Famine,There the battle's groan of pain;And, in silence, smooth-faced MammonReaping men like grain."'Where is God, that we should fear Him?'Thus the earth-born Titans say'God! if Thou art living, hear us!'Thus the weak ones pray.""Thou, the patient Heaven upbraiding,"Spake a solemn Voice within;"Weary of our Lord's forbearance,Art thou free from sin?"Fearless brow to Him uplifting,Canst thou for His thunders call,Knowing that to guilt's attractionEvermore they fall?"Know'st thou not all germs of evilIn thy heart await their time?Not thyself, but God's restraining,Stays their growth of crime."Couldst thou boast, O child of weakness!O'er the sons of wrong and strife,Were their strong temptations plantedIn thy path of life?"Thou hast seen two streamlets gushingFrom one fountain, clear and free,But by widely varying channelsSearching for the sea."Glideth one through greenest valleys,Kissing them with lips still sweet;One, mad roaring down the mountains,Stagnates at their feet."Is it choice whereby the ParseeKneels before his mother's fire?In his black tent did the TartarChoose his wandering sire?"He alone, whose hand is boundingHuman power and human will,Looking through each soul's surrounding,Knows its good or ill."For thyself, while wrong and sorrowMake to thee their strong appeal,Coward wert thou not to utterWhat the heart must feel."Earnest words must needs be spokenWhen the warm heart bleeds or burnsWith its scorn of wrong, or pityFor the wronged, by turns."But, by all thy nature's weakness,Hidden faults and follies known,Be thou, in rebuking evil,Conscious of thine own."Not the less shall stern-eyed DutyTo thy lips her trumpet set,But with harsher blasts shall mingleWailings of regret."Cease not, Voice of holy speaking,Teacher sent of God, be near,Whispering through the day's cool silence,Let my spirit hear!So, when thoughts of evil-doersWaken scorn, or hatred move,Shall a mournful fellow-feelingTemper all with love.1847.
To weary hearts, to mourning homes,God's meekest Angel gently comesNo power has he to banish pain,Or give us back our lost again;And yet in tenderest love, our dearAnd Heavenly Father sends him here.There's quiet in that Angel's glance,There 's rest in his still countenance!He mocks no grief with idle cheer,Nor wounds with words the mourner's ear;But ills and woes he may not cureHe kindly trains us to endure.Angel of Patience! sent to calmOur feverish brows with cooling palm;To lay the storms of hope and fear,And reconcile life's smile and tear;The throbs of wounded pride to still,And make our own our Father's will.O thou who mournest on thy way,With longings for the close of day;He walks with thee, that Angel kind,And gently whispers, "Be resignedBear up, bear on, the end shall tellThe dear Lord ordereth all things well!"1847.
Against the sunset's glowing wallThe city towers rise black and tall,Where Zorah, on its rocky height,Stands like an armed man in the light.Down Eshtaol's vales of ripened grainFalls like a cloud the night amain,And up the hillsides climbing slowThe barley reapers homeward go.Look, dearest! how our fair child's headThe sunset light hath hallowed,Where at this olive's foot he lies,Uplooking to the tranquil skies.Oh, while beneath the fervent heatThy sickle swept the bearded wheat,I've watched, with mingled joy and dread,Our child upon his grassy bed.Joy, which the mother feels aloneWhose morning hope like mine had flown,When to her bosom, over-blessed,A dearer life than hers is pressed.Dread, for the future dark and still,Which shapes our dear one to its will;Forever in his large calm eyes,I read a tale of sacrifice.The same foreboding awe I feltWhen at the altar's side we knelt,And he, who as a pilgrim came,Rose, winged and glorious, through the flame.I slept not, though the wild bees madeA dreamlike murmuring in the shade,And on me the warm-fingered hoursPressed with the drowsy smell of flowers.Before me, in a vision, roseThe hosts of Israel's scornful foes,—Rank over rank, helm, shield, and spear,Glittered in noon's hot atmosphere.I heard their boast, and bitter word,Their mockery of the Hebrew's Lord,I saw their hands His ark assail,Their feet profane His holy veil.No angel down the blue space spoke,No thunder from the still sky broke;But in their midst, in power and awe,Like God's waked wrath, our child I saw!A child no more!—harsh-browed and strong,He towered a giant in the throng,And down his shoulders, broad and bare,Swept the black terror of his hair.He raised his arm—he smote amain;As round the reaper falls the grain,So the dark host around him fell,So sank the foes of Israel!Again I looked. In sunlight shoneThe towers and domes of Askelon;Priest, warrior, slave, a mighty crowdWithin her idol temple bowed.Yet one knelt not; stark, gaunt, and blind,His arms the massive pillars twined,—An eyeless captive, strong with hate,He stood there like an evil Fate.The red shrines smoked,—the trumpets pealedHe stooped,—the giant columns reeled;Reeled tower and fane, sank arch and wall,And the thick dust-cloud closed o'er all!Above the shriek, the crash, the groanOf the fallen pride of Askelon,I heard, sheer down the echoing sky,A voice as of an angel cry,—The voice of him, who at our sideSat through the golden eventide;Of him who, on thy altar's blaze,Rose fire-winged, with his song of praise."Rejoice o'er Israel's broken chain,Gray mother of the mighty slain!Rejoice!" it cried, "he vanquisheth!The strong in life is strong in death!"To him shall Zorah's daughters raiseThrough coming years their hymns of praise,And gray old men at evening tellOf all he wrought for Israel."And they who sing and they who hearAlike shall hold thy memory dear,And pour their blessings on thy head,O mother of the mighty dead!"It ceased; and though a sound I heardAs if great wings the still air stirred,I only saw the barley sheavesAnd hills half hid by olive leaves.I bowed my face, in awe and fear,On the dear child who slumbered near;"With me, as with my only son,O God," I said, "Thy will be done!"1847.
Stand still, my soul, in the silent darkI would question thee,Alone in the shadow drear and starkWith God and me!What, my soul, was thy errand here?Was it mirth or ease,Or heaping up dust from year to year?"Nay, none of these!"Speak, soul, aright in His holy sightWhose eye looks stillAnd steadily on thee through the night"To do His will!"What hast thou done, O soul of mine,That thou tremblest so?Hast thou wrought His task, and kept the lineHe bade thee go?Aha! thou tremblest!—well I seeThou 'rt craven grown.Is it so hard with God and meTo stand alone?Summon thy sunshine bravery back,O wretched sprite!Let me hear thy voice through this deep and blackAbysmal night.What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth,For God and Man,From the golden hours of bright-eyed youthTo life's mid span?What, silent all! art sad of cheer?Art fearful now?When God seemed far and men were near,How brave wert thou!Ah, soul of mine, thy tones I hear,But weak and low,Like far sad murmurs on my earThey come and go.I have wrestled stoutly with the Wrong,And borne the RightFrom beneath the footfall of the throngTo life and light."Wherever Freedom shivered a chain,God speed, quoth I;To Error amidst her shouting trainI gave the lie."Ah, soul of mine! ah, soul of mine!Thy deeds are well:Were they wrought for Truth's sake or for thine?My soul, pray tell."Of all the work my hand hath wroughtBeneath the sky,Save a place in kindly human thought,No gain have I."Go to, go to! for thy very selfThy deeds were doneThou for fame, the miser for pelf,Your end is one!And where art thou going, soul of mine?Canst see the end?And whither this troubled life of thineEvermore doth tend?What daunts thee now? what shakes thee so?My sad soul say."I see a cloud like a curtain lowHang o'er my way."Whither I go I cannot tellThat cloud hangs black,High as the heaven and deep as hellAcross my track."I see its shadow coldly enwrapThe souls before.Sadly they enter it, step by step,To return no more."They shrink, they shudder, dear God! they kneelTo Thee in prayer.They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feelThat it still is there."In vain they turn from the dread BeforeTo the Known and Gone;For while gazing behind them evermoreTheir feet glide on."Yet, at times, I see upon sweet pale facesA light beginTo tremble, as if from holy placesAnd shrines within."And at times methinks their cold lips moveWith hymn and prayer,As if somewhat of awe, but more of loveAnd hope were there."I call on the souls who have left the lightTo reveal their lot;I bend mine ear to that wall of night,And they answer not."But I hear around me sighs of painAnd the cry of fear,And a sound like the slow sad dropping of rain,Each drop a tear!"Ah, the cloud is dark, and day by dayI am moving thitherI must pass beneath it on my way—God pity me!—whither?"Ah, soul of mine! so brave and wiseIn the life-storm loud,Fronting so calmly all human eyesIn the sunlit crowd!Now standing apart with God and meThou art weakness all,Gazing vainly after the things to beThrough Death's dread wall.But never for this, never for thisWas thy being lent;For the craven's fear is but selfishness,Like his merriment.Folly and Fear are sisters twainOne closing her eyes.The other peopling the dark inaneWith spectral lies.Know well, my soul, God's hand controlsWhate'er thou fearest;Round Him in calmest music rollsWhate'er thou Nearest.What to thee is shadow, to Him is day,And the end He knoweth,And not on a blind and aimless wayThe spirit goeth.Man sees no future,—a phantom showIs alone before him;Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow,And flowers bloom o'er him.Nothing before, nothing behind;The steps of FaithFall on the seeming void, and findThe rock beneath.The Present, the Present is all thou hastFor thy sure possessing;Like the patriarch's angel hold it fastTill it gives its blessing.Why fear the night? why shrink from Death;That phantom wan?There is nothing in heaven or earth beneathSave God and man.Peopling the shadows we turn from HimAnd from one another;All is spectral and vague and dimSave God and our brother!Like warp and woof all destiniesAre woven fast,Linked in sympathy like the keysOf an organ vast.Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar;Break but oneOf a thousand keys, and the paining jarThrough all will run.O restless spirit! wherefore strainBeyond thy sphere?Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain,Are now and here.Back to thyself is measured wellAll thou hast given;Thy neighbor's wrong is thy present hell,His bliss, thy heaven.And in life, in death, in dark and light,All are in God's careSound the black abyss, pierce the deep of night,And He is there!All which is real now remaineth,And fadeth neverThe hand which upholds it now sustainethThe soul forever.Leaning on Him, make with reverent meeknessHis own thy will,And with strength from Him shall thy utter weaknessLife's task fulfil;And that cloud itself, which now before theeLies dark in view,Shall with beams of light from the inner gloryBe stricken through.And like meadow mist through autumn's dawnUprolling thin,Its thickest folds when about thee drawnLet sunlight in.Then of what is to be, and of what is done,Why queriest thou?The past and the time to be are one,And both are now!1847.
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this. To visit the fatherless and widows in, their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."—JAMES I. 27.
The Pagan's myths through marble lips are spoken,And ghosts of old Beliefs still flit and moanRound fane and altar overthrown and broken,O'er tree-grown barrow and gray ring of stone.Blind Faith had martyrs in those old high places,The Syrian hill grove and the Druid's wood,With mother's offering, to the Fiend's embraces,Bone of their bone, and blood of their own blood.Red altars, kindling through that night of error,Smoked with warm blood beneath the cruel eyeOf lawless Power and sanguinary Terror,Throned on the circle of a pitiless sky;Beneath whose baleful shadow, overcastingAll heaven above, and blighting earth below,The scourge grew red, the lip grew pale with fasting,And man's oblation was his fear and woe!Then through great temples swelled the dismal moaningOf dirge-like music and sepulchral prayer;Pale wizard priests, o'er occult symbols droning,Swung their white censers in the burdened airAs if the pomp of rituals, and the savorOf gums and spices could the Unseen One please;As if His ear could bend, with childish favor,To the poor flattery of the organ keys!Feet red from war-fields trod the church aisles holy,With trembling reverence: and the oppressor there,Kneeling before his priest, abased and lowly,Crushed human hearts beneath his knee of prayer.Not such the service the benignant FatherRequireth at His earthly children's handsNot the poor offering of vain rites, but ratherThe simple duty man from man demands.For Earth He asks it: the full joy of heavenKnoweth no change of waning or increase;The great heart of the Infinite beats even,Untroubled flows the river of His peace.He asks no taper lights, on high surroundingThe priestly altar and the saintly grave,No dolorous chant nor organ music sounding,Nor incense clouding tip the twilight nave.For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spokenThe holier worship which he deigns to blessRestores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,And feeds the widow and the fatherless!Types of our human weakness and our sorrow!Who lives unhaunted by his loved ones dead?Who, with vain longing, seeketh not to borrowFrom stranger eyes the home lights which have fled?O brother man! fold to thy heart thy brother;Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;To worship rightly is to love each other,Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.Follow with reverent steps the great exampleOf Him whose holy work was "doing good;"So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangorOf wild war music o'er the earth shall cease;Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,And in its ashes plant the tree of peace!1848.
Paraphrased from the lines in Lamartine'sAdieu to Marseilles, beginning
"Je n'ai pas navigue sur l'ocean de sable."
I have not felt, o'er seas of sand,The rocking of the desert bark;Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark;Nor pitched my tent at even-fall,On dust where Job of old has lain,Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,The dream of Jacob o'er again.One vast world-page remains unread;How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky,How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread,How beats the heart with God so nighHow round gray arch and column loneThe spirit of the old time broods,And sighs in all the winds that moanAlong the sandy solitudes!In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,I have not heard the nations' cries,Nor seen thy eagles stooping downWhere buried Tyre in ruin lies.The Christian's prayer I have not saidIn Tadmor's temples of decay,Nor startled, with my dreary tread,The waste where Memnon's empire lay.Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide,O Jordan! heard the low lament,Like that sad wail along thy sideWhich Israel's mournful prophet sent!Nor thrilled within that grotto loneWhere, deep in night, the Bard of KingsFelt hands of fire direct his own,And sweep for God the conscious strings.I have not climbed to Olivet,Nor laid me where my Saviour lay,And left His trace of tears as yetBy angel eyes unwept away;Nor watched, at midnight's solemn time,The garden where His prayer and groan,Wrung by His sorrow and our crime,Rose to One listening ear alone.I have not kissed the rock-hewn grotWhere in His mother's arms He lay,Nor knelt upon the sacred spotWhere last His footsteps pressed the clay;Nor looked on that sad mountain head,Nor smote my sinful breast, where wideHis arms to fold the world He spread,And bowed His head to bless—and died!1848.
Who, looking backward from his manhood's prime,Sees not the spectre of his misspent time?And, through the shadeOf funeral cypress planted thick behind,Hears no reproachful whisper on the windFrom his loved dead?Who bears no trace of passion's evil force?Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Remorse?Who does not castOn the thronged pages of his memory's book,At times, a sad and half-reluctant look,Regretful of the past?Alas! the evil which we fain would shunWe do, and leave the wished-for good undoneOur strength to-dayIs but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall;Poor, blind, unprofitable servants allAre we alway.Yet who, thus looking backward o'er his years,Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,If he hath beenPermitted, weak and sinful as he was,To cheer and aid, in some ennobling cause,His fellow-men?If he hath hidden the outcast, or let inA ray of sunshine to the cell of sin;If he hath lentStrength to the weak, and, in an hour of need,Over the suffering, mindless of his creedOr home, hath bent;He has not lived in vain, and while he givesThe praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives,With thankful heart;He gazes backward, and with hope before,Knowing that from his works he nevermoreCan henceforth part.1848.
I ask not now for gold to gildWith mocking shine a weary frame;The yearning of the mind is stilled,I ask not now for Fame.A rose-cloud, dimly seen above,Melting in heaven's blue depths away;Oh, sweet, fond dream of human LoveFor thee I may not pray.But, bowed in lowliness of mind,I make my humble wishes known;I only ask a will resigned,O Father, to Thine own!To-day, beneath Thy chastening eyeI crave alone for peace and rest,Submissive in Thy hand to lie,And feel that it is best.A marvel seems the Universe,A miracle our Life and Death;A mystery which I cannot pierce,Around, above, beneath.In vain I task my aching brain,In vain the sage's thought I scan,I only feel how weak and vain,How poor and blind, is man.And now my spirit sighs for home,And longs for light whereby to see,And, like a weary child, would come,O Father, unto Thee!Though oft, like letters traced on sand,My weak resolves have passed away,In mercy lend Thy helping handUnto my prayer to-day!1848.
The clouds, which rise with thunder, slakeOur thirsty souls with rain;The blow most dreaded falls to breakFrom off our limbs a chain;And wrongs of man to man but makeThe love of God more plain.As through the shadowy lens of evenThe eye looks farthest into heavenOn gleams of star and depths of blueThe glaring sunshine never knew!1850.
Through Thy clear spaces, Lord, of old,Formless and void the dead earth rolled;Deaf to Thy heaven's sweet music, blindTo the great lights which o'er it shined;No sound, no ray, no warmth, no breath,—A dumb despair, a wandering death.To that dark, weltering horror cameThy spirit, like a subtle flame,—A breath of life electrical,Awakening and transforming all,Till beat and thrilled in every partThe pulses of a living heart.Then knew their bounds the land and sea;Then smiled the bloom of mead and tree;From flower to moth, from beast to man,The quick creative impulse ran;And earth, with life from thee renewed,Was in thy holy eyesight good.As lost and void, as dark and coldAnd formless as that earth of old;A wandering waste of storm and night,Midst spheres of song and realms of light;A blot upon thy holy sky,Untouched, unwarned of thee, am I.O Thou who movest on the deepOf spirits, wake my own from sleepIts darkness melt, its coldness warm,The lost restore, the ill transform,That flower and fruit henceforth may beIts grateful offering, worthy Thee.1851.
And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name was Uriel, gave me an answer and said, "Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, and thinkest thou to comprehend the way of the Most High?" Then said I, "Yea, my Lord." Then said he unto me, "Go thy way, weigh me the weight of the fire or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the day that is past."—2 ESDRAS, chap. iv.
A bending staff I would not break,A feeble faith I would not shake,Nor even rashly pluck awayThe error which some truth may stay,Whose loss might leave the soul withoutA shield against the shafts of doubt.And yet, at times, when over allA darker mystery seems to fall,(May God forgive the child of dust,Who seeks to know, where Faith should trust!)I raise the questions, old and dark,Of Uzdom's tempted patriarch,And, speech-confounded, build againThe baffled tower of Shinar's plain.I am: how little more I know!Whence came I? Whither do I go?A centred self, which feels and is;A cry between the silences;A shadow-birth of clouds at strifeWith sunshine on the hills of life;A shaft from Nature's quiver castInto the Future from the Past;Between the cradle and the shroud,A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud.Thorough the vastness, arching all,I see the great stars rise and fall,The rounding seasons come and go,The tided oceans ebb and flow;The tokens of a central force,Whose circles, in their widening course,O'erlap and move the universe;The workings of the law whence springsThe rhythmic harmony of things,Which shapes in earth the darkling spar,And orbs in heaven the morning star.Of all I see, in earth and sky,—Star, flower, beast, bird,—what part have I?This conscious life,—is it the sameWhich thrills the universal frame,Whereby the caverned crystal shoots,And mounts the sap from forest roots,Whereby the exiled wood-bird tellsWhen Spring makes green her native dells?How feels the stone the pang of birth,Which brings its sparkling prism forth?The forest-tree the throb which givesThe life-blood to its new-born leaves?Do bird and blossom feel, like me,Life's many-folded mystery,—The wonder which it is to be?Or stand I severed and distinct,From Nature's "chain of life" unlinked?Allied to all, yet not the lessPrisoned in separate consciousness,Alone o'erburdened with a senseOf life, and cause, and consequence?In vain to me the Sphinx propoundsThe riddle of her sights and sounds;Back still the vaulted mystery givesThe echoed question it receives.What sings the brook? What oracleIs in the pine-tree's organ swell?What may the wind's low burden be?The meaning of the moaning sea?The hieroglyphics of the stars?Or clouded sunset's crimson bars?I vainly ask, for mocks my skillThe trick of Nature's cipher still.I turn from Nature unto men,I ask the stylus and the pen;What sang the bards of old? What meantThe prophets of the Orient?The rolls of buried Egypt, hidIn painted tomb and pyramid?What mean Idumea's arrowy lines,Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs?How speaks the primal thought of manFrom the grim carvings of Copan?Where rests the secret? Where the keysOf the old death-bolted mysteries?Alas! the dead retain their trust;Dust hath no answer from the dust.The great enigma still unguessed,Unanswered the eternal quest;I gather up the scattered raysOf wisdom in the early days,Faint gleams and broken, like the lightOf meteors in a northern night,Betraying to the darkling earthThe unseen sun which gave them birth;I listen to the sibyl's chant,The voice of priest and hierophant;I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,And what of life and what of deathThe demon taught to Socrates;And what, beneath his garden-treesSlow pacing, with a dream-like tread,—The solemn-thoughted Plato said;Nor lack I tokens, great or small,Of God's clear light in each and all,While holding with more dear regardThe scroll of Hebrew seer and bard,The starry pages promise-litWith Christ's Evangel over-writ,Thy miracle of life and death,O Holy One of Nazareth!On Aztec ruins, gray and lone,The circling serpent coils in stone,—Type of the endless and unknown;Whereof we seek the clue to find,With groping fingers of the blind!Forever sought, and never found,We trace that serpent-symbol roundOur resting-place, our starting boundOh, thriftlessness of dream and guess!Oh, wisdom which is foolishness!Why idly seek from outward thingsThe answer inward silence brings?Why stretch beyond our proper sphereAnd age, for that which lies so near?Why climb the far-off hills with pain,A nearer view of heaven to gain?In lowliest depths of bosky dellsThe hermit Contemplation dwells.A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat,And lotus-twined his silent feet,Whence, piercing heaven, with screened sight,He sees at noon the stars, whose lightShall glorify the coining night.Here let me pause, my quest forego;Enough for me to feel and knowThat He in whom the cause and end,The past and future, meet and blend,—Who, girt with his Immensities,Our vast and star-hung system sees,Small as the clustered Pleiades,—Moves not alone the heavenly quires,But waves the spring-time's grassy spires,Guards not archangel feet alone,But deigns to guide and keep my own;Speaks not alone the words of fateWhich worlds destroy, and worlds create,But whispers in my spirit's ear,In tones of love, or warning fear,A language none beside may hear.To Him, from wanderings long and wild,I come, an over-wearied child,In cool and shade His peace to find,Lice dew-fall settling on my mind.Assured that all I know is best,And humbly trusting for the rest,I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme,Dark creed, and mournful eastern dreamOf power, impersonal and cold,Controlling all, itself controlled,Maker and slave of iron laws,Alike the subject and the cause;From vain philosophies, that tryThe sevenfold gates of mystery,And, baffled ever, babble still,Word-prodigal of fate and will;From Nature, and her mockery, Art;And book and speech of men apart,To the still witness in my heart;With reverence waiting to beholdHis Avatar of love untold,The Eternal Beauty new and old!1862.