John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Religious PoemsMy Soul and I
S
I would question thee,
Alone in the shadow drear and stark
With God and me!
Was it mirth or ease,
Or heaping up dust from year to year?
“Nay, none of these!”
Whose eye looks still
And steadily on thee through the night:
“To do His will!”
That thou tremblest so?
Hast thou wrought His task, and kept the line
He bade thee go?
Art fearful now?
When God seemed far and men were near,
How brave wert thou!
Thou ’rt craven grown.
Is it so hard with God and me
To stand alone?
O wretched sprite!
Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black
Abysmal night.
For God and Man,
From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth
To life’s mid span?
But weak and low,
Like far sad murmurs on my ear
They come and go.
And borne the Right
From beneath the footfall of the throng
To life and light.
God speed, quoth I;
To Error amidst her shouting train
I gave the lie.”
Thy deeds are well:
Were they wrought for Truth’s sake or for thine?
My soul, pray tell.
Beneath the sky,
Save a place in kindly human thought,
No gain have I.”
Thy deeds were done:
Thou for fame, the miser for pelf,
Your end is one!
Canst see the end?
And whither this troubled life of thine
Evermore doth tend?
My sad soul say.
“I see a cloud like a curtain low
Hang o’er my way.
That cloud hangs black,
High as the heaven and deep as hell
Across my track.
The souls before.
Sadly they enter it, step by step,
To return no more.
To Thee in prayer.
They shut their eyes on the cloud, but feel
That it still is there.
To the Known and Gone;
For while gazing behind them evermore
Their feet glide on.
A light begin
To tremble, as if from holy places
And shrines within.
With hymn and prayer,
As if somewhat of awe, but more of love
And hope were there.
To reveal their lot;
I bend mine ear to that wall of night,
And they answer not.
And the cry of fear,
And a sound like the slow sad dropping of rain,
Each drop a tear!
I am moving thither:
I must pass beneath it on my way—
God pity me!—whither?”
In the life-storm loud,
Fronting so calmly all human eyes
In the sunlit crowd!
Thou art weakness all,
Gazing vainly after the things to be
Through Death’s dread wall.
Was thy being lent;
For the craven’s fear is but selfishness,
Like his merriment.
One closing her eyes,
The other peopling the dark inane
With spectral lies.
Whate’er thou fearest;
Round Him in calmest music rolls
Whate’er thou hearest.
And the end He knoweth,
And not on a blind and aimless way
The spirit goeth.
Is alone before him;
Past Time is dead, and the grasses grow,
And flowers bloom o’er him.
The steps of Faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find
The rock beneath.
For thy sure possessing;
Like the patriarch’s angel hold it fast
Till it gives its blessing.
That phantom wan?
There is nothing in heaven or earth beneath
Save God and man.
And from one another;
All is spectral and vague and dim
Save God and our brother!
Are woven fast,
Linked in sympathy like the keys
Of an organ vast.
Break but one
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar
Through all will run.
Beyond thy sphere?
Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain,
Are now and here.
All thou hast given;
Thy neighbor’s wrong is thy present hell,
His bliss, thy heaven.
All are in God’s care:
Sound the black abyss, pierce the deep of night,
And He is there!
And fadeth never:
The hand which upholds it now sustaineth
The soul forever.
His own thy will,
And with strength from Him shall thy utter weakness
Life’s task fulfil;
Lies dark in view,
Shall with beams of light from the inner glory
Be stricken through.
Uprolling thin,
Its thickest folds when about thee drawn
Let sunlight in.
Why queriest thou?
The past and the time to be are one,
And both are now!