And sometimes Wrong and Right, the thing we fear, The thing we cherish, draw confusedly near; We know not which to choose, we cannot separate Our longing and our hate. But Love the Conqueror, Love, Immortal Love, Spurning the brute earth with his purple wings, Some radiant beam to light the House of Life, Our lower lives, and calms the ignoble strife, Soars with it to the eternal shore, Where sight or thought of evil comes no more. Love sitteth now above, Enthroned in glory, And yet hath deigned to move Through life's sad story. Fair Name, we are only thine! Thou only art divine! Be with us to the end, for there is none But thou to bind together God and Man in one. THE BEGINNINGS OF FAITH All travail of high thought, All secrets vainly sought, All struggles for right, heroic, perpetually fought. Faint gleams of purer fire, Conquests of gross desire, Whereby the fettered soul ascends continually higher. Sweet cares for love or friend Which ever heavenward tend, Too deep and true and tender to have on earth their end. Vile hearts malign and fell, Lives which no tongue may tell, So dark and dread and shameful that they breathe a present hell. White mountain, deep-set lake, Sea wastes which surge and break, Fierce storms which, roaring from the north, the midnight forests shake. Fair morns of summer days, Rich harvest eves that raise The soul and heart o'erburdened to an ecstasy of praise. Low whispers, vague and strange, Breathing perpetual presage of some mighty coming change. These in the soul do breed Thoughts which, at last, shall lead To some clear, firm assurance of a satisfying creed. THE ODE OF DECLINE With forces well-nigh spent, Uneasy or in pain, Or brought to childish weakness once again, We come, if Fate so will, to cold decrepit age. Only four score of summers, and four score And then 'tis done. We have spent our fruitful days beneath the sun; Where little is sweet or fair. We, who a few brief years ago, Would passionately go Across the fields of Life to meet the morn, Which kissed the Eastern peaks, grow gradually grey. Great Heaven, that Thou hast made our lives so brief And swiftly spent! We toil our little day and are content, Though Time, the thief, Stands at our side, and smiles his mystic smile. We joy a little, we grieve a little while; We gain some little glimpse of Thy great laws, Eternal Source and Cause! And then, the night descending as a cloud, We walk with aspect bowed, And turn to earth and see our Life grow dark. Was it for this the fiery spark Of Thy Eternal Self, sown on the vast And infinite abysses of the Past, Revealed itself and made Creation rise Before Thy Eternal Mind: This little span of life, with purblind eyes That grow completely blind; This little force of brain, Holding dim thoughts sublime, Too weak to withstand the treacheries of Time; This body bent and bowed in twain, Soon racked by growing pain, Which briefer far than is the life of the tree, Springs as a flower and fades, and then must rot Passing from mystery to mystery? It is a pain To move through the old fields,—even though they lie Before our eyes, we know that never again, Where once our daily feet were used to pass We any more shall wander till we die; Nor to the old grey church, with the tall spire, Whose vane the sunsets fire, Where once a little child, by kind hands led, When pain and Time are done. |