| |
| THE ELDER folk shook hands at last, | |
| Down seat by seat the signal passed. | |
| To simple ways like ours unused, | |
| Half solemnized and half amused, | |
| With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest | 5 |
| His sense of glad relief expressed. | |
| Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; | |
| The cattle in the meadow-run | |
| Stood half-leg deep; a single bird | |
| The green repose above us stirred. | 10 |
| “What part or lot have you,” he said, | |
| “In these dull rites of drowsy-head? | |
| Is silence worship? Seek it where | |
| It soothes with dreams the summer air; | |
| Not in this close and rude-benched hall, | 15 |
| But where soft lights and shadows fall, | |
| And all the slow, sleep-walking hours | |
| Glide soundless over grass and flowers! | |
| From time and place and form apart, | |
| Its holy ground the human heart, | 20 |
| Nor ritual-bound nor templeward | |
| Walks the free spirit of the Lord! | |
| Our common Master did not pen | |
| His followers up from other men; | |
| His service liberty indeed, | 25 |
| He built no church, he framed no creed; | |
| But while the saintly Pharisee | |
| Made broader his phylactery, | |
| As from the synagogue was seen | |
| The dusty-sandalled Nazarene | 30 |
| Through ripening cornfields lead the way | |
| Upon the awful Sabbath day, | |
| His sermons were the healthful talk | |
| That shorter made the mountain-walk, | |
| His wayside texts were flowers and birds, | 35 |
| Where mingled with his gracious words | |
| The rustle of the tamarisk-tree | |
| And ripple-wash of Galilee.” | |
| |
| “Thy words are well, O friend,” I said; | |
| “Unmeasured and unlimited, | 40 |
| With noiseless slide of stone to stone, | |
| The mystic Church of God has grown. | |
| Invisible and silent stands | |
| The temple never made with hands, | |
| Unheard the voices still and small | 45 |
| Of its unseen confessional. | |
| He needs no special place of prayer | |
| Whose hearing ear is everywhere; | |
| He brings not back the childish days | |
| That ringed the earth with stones of praise, | 50 |
| Roofed Karnak’s hall of gods, and laid | |
| The plinths of Philæ’s colonnade. | |
| Still less he owns the selfish good | |
| And sickly growth of solitude,— | |
| The worthless grace that, out of sight, | 55 |
| Flowers in the desert anchorite; | |
| Dissevered from the suffering whole, | |
| Love hath no power to save a soul. | |
| Not out of Self, the origin | |
| And native air and soil of sin, | 60 |
| The living waters spring and flow, | |
| The trees with leaves of healing grow. | |
| |
| “Dream not, O friend, because I seek | |
| This quiet shelter twice a week, | |
| I better deem its pine-laid floor | 65 |
| Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore; | |
| But nature is not solitude; | |
| She crowds us with her thronging wood; | |
| Her many hands reach out to us, | |
| Her many tongues are garrulous; | 70 |
| Perpetual riddles of surprise | |
| She offers to our ears and eyes; | |
| She will not leave our senses still, | |
| But drags them captive at her will; | |
| And, making earth too great for heaven, | 75 |
| She hides the Giver in the given. | |
| |
| “And so I find it well to come | |
| For deeper rest to this still room, | |
| For here the habit of the soul | |
| Feels less the outer world’s control; | 80 |
| The strength of mutual purpose pleads | |
| More earnestly our common needs; | |
| And from the silence multiplied | |
| By these still forms on either side, | |
| The world that time and sense have known | 85 |
| Falls off and leaves us God alone. | |
| |
| “Yet rarely through the charmed repose | |
| Unmixed the stream of motive flows, | |
| A flavor of its many springs, | |
| The tints of earth and sky it brings; | 90 |
| In the still waters needs must be | |
| Some shade of human sympathy; | |
| And here, in its accustomed place, | |
| I look on memory’s dearest face; | |
| The blind by-sitter guesseth not | 95 |
| What shadow haunts that vacant spot; | |
| No eyes save mine alone can see | |
| The love wherewith it welcomes me! | |
| And still, with those alone my kin, | |
| In doubt and weakness, want and sin, | 100 |
| I bow my head, my heart I bare | |
| As when that face was living there, | |
| And strive (too oft, alas! in vain) | |
| The peace of simple trust to gain, | |
| Fold fancy’s restless wings, and lay | 105 |
| The idols of my heart away. | |
| |
| “Welcome the silence all unbroken, | |
| Nor less the words of fitness spoken,— | |
| Such golden words as hers for whom | |
| Our autumn flowers have just made room; | 110 |
| Whose hopeful utterance through and through | |
| The freshness of the morning blew; | |
| Who loved not less the earth that light | |
| Fell on it from the heavens in sight, | |
| But saw in all fair forms more fair | 115 |
| The Eternal beauty mirrored there. | |
| Whose eighty years but added grace | |
| And saintlier meaning to her face,— | |
| The look of one who bore away | |
| Glad tidings from the hills of day, | 120 |
| While all our hearts went forth to meet | |
| The coming of her beautiful feet! | |
| Or haply hers whose pilgrim tread | |
| Is in the paths where Jesus led; | |
| Who dreams her childhood’s Sabbath dream | 125 |
| By Jordan’s willow-shaded stream, | |
| And, of the hymns of hope and faith, | |
| Sang by the monks of Nazareth, | |
| Hears pious echoes, in the call | |
| To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, | 130 |
| Repeating where His works were wrought | |
| The lesson that her Master taught, | |
| Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, | |
| The prophecies of Cumæ’s cave! | |
| |
| “I ask no organ’s soulless breath | 135 |
| To drone the themes of life and death, | |
| No altar candle-lit by day, | |
| No ornate wordsman’s rhetoric-play, | |
| No cool philosophy to teach | |
| Its bland audacities of speech | 140 |
| To double-tasked idolaters, | |
| Themselves their gods and worshippers, | |
| No pulpit hammered by the fist | |
| Of loud-asserting dogmatist, | |
| Who borrows for the hand of love | 145 |
| The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. | |
| I know how well the fathers taught, | |
| What work the later schoolmen wrought; | |
| I reverence old-time faith and men, | |
| But God is near us now as then; | 150 |
| His force of love is still unspent, | |
| His hate of sin as imminent; | |
| And still the measure of our needs | |
| Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds; | |
| The manna gathered yesterday | 155 |
| Already savors of decay; | |
| Doubts to the world’s child-heart unknown | |
| Question us now from star and stone; | |
| Too little or too much we know, | |
| And sight is swift and faith is slow; | 160 |
| The power is lost to self-deceive | |
| With shallow forms of make-believe. | |
| We walk at high noon, and the bells | |
| Call to a thousand oracles, | |
| But the sound deafens, and the light | 165 |
| Is stronger than our dazzled sight; | |
| The letters of the sacred Book | |
| Glimmer and swim beneath our look; | |
| Still struggles in the Age’s breast | |
| With deepening agony of quest | 170 |
| The old entreaty: ‘Art thou He, | |
| Or look we for the Christ to be?’ | |
| |
| “God should be most where man is least; | |
| So, where is neither church nor priest, | |
| And never rag of form or creed | 175 |
| To clothe the nakedness of need,— | |
| Where farmer-folk in silence meet,— | |
| I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; | |
| I lay the critic’s glass aside, | |
| I tread upon my lettered pride, | 180 |
| And, lowest-seated, testify | |
| To the oneness of humanity; | |
| Confess the universal want, | |
| And share whatever Heaven may grant. | |
| He findeth not who seeks his own, | 185 |
| The soul is lost that ’s saved alone. | |
| Not on one favored forehead fell | |
| Of old the fire-tongued miracle, | |
| But flamed o’er all the thronging host | |
| The baptism of the Holy Ghost; | 190 |
| Heart answers heart: in one desire | |
| The blending lines of prayer aspire; | |
| ’Where, in my name, meet two or three,’ | |
| Our Lord hath said, ‘I there will be!’ | |
| |
| “So sometimes comes to soul and sense | 195 |
| The feeling which is evidence | |
| That very near about us lies | |
| The realm of spiritual mysteries. | |
| The sphere of the supernal powers | |
| Impinges on this world of ours. | 200 |
| The low and dark horizon lifts, | |
| To light the scenic terror shifts; | |
| The breath of a diviner air | |
| Blows down the answer of a prayer:— | |
| That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt | 205 |
| A great compassion clasps about, | |
| And law and goodness, love and force, | |
| Are wedded fast beyond divorce. | |
| Then duty leaves to love its task, | |
| The beggar Self forgets to ask; | 210 |
| With smile of trust and folded hands, | |
| The passive soul in waiting stands | |
| To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, | |
| The One true Life its own renew. | |
| |
| “So, to the calmly gathered thought | 215 |
| The innermost of truth is taught, | |
| The mystery dimly understood, | |
| That love of God is love of good, | |
| And, chiefly, its divinest trace | |
| In Him of Nazareth’s holy face; | 220 |
| That to be saved is only this,— | |
| Salvation from our selfishness, | |
| From more than elemental fire, | |
| The soul’s unsanctified desire, | |
| From sin itself, and not the pain | 225 |
| That warns us of its chafing chain; | |
| That worship’s deeper meaning lies | |
| In mercy, and not sacrifice, | |
| Not proud humilities of sense | |
| And posturing of penitence, | 230 |
| But love’s unforced obedience; | |
| That Book and Church and Day are given | |
| For man, not God,—for earth, not heaven,— | |
| The blessèd means to holiest ends, | |
| Not masters, but benignant friends; | 235 |
| That the dear Christ dwells not afar, | |
| The king of some remoter star, | |
| Listening, at times, with flattered ear, | |
| To homage wrung from selfish fear, | |
| But here, amidst the poor and blind, | 240 |
| The bound and suffering of our kind, | |
| In works we do, in prayers we pray, | |
| Life of our life, He lives to-day.” | |
| |
