But the sound deafens, and the light
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
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
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,
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,
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;
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
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.
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
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;
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
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;
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
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,
But love's unforced obedience;
That Book and Church and Day are given
For man, not God, - for earth, not heaven,
The blessed means to holiest ends,
Not masters, but benignant friends ;
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,
The bound and suffering of our kind,
In works we do, in prayers we pray,
Life of our life, He lives to-day."
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
Fair and sad,
In sin and beauty, our beloved Earth
Has need of all her sons to make her glad ;
Has need of martyrs to refire the hearth
Of her quenched altars, of heroic men
With Freedom's sword, or Truth's supernal pen,
To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again.
And she has need of Poets who can string
Their harps with steel to catch the light-
ning's fire,
And pour her thunders from the clanging
wire,
To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer,
Arouse the laggard in the battle's rear,
Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord wring
Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul
Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing
In golden choirs above,
And only wears, for crown and aureole,
The glow-worm light of lowliest human love,
Shall fill with low, sweet undertones the All the fight fought, all the short journey
Of silence, 'twixt the booming thunder-spasms. And Earth has need of Prophets fiery-lipped
through,
What should I do?
And deep-souled, to announce the glorious I do not think that I should shrink or falter,
Writ on the silent heavens in starry script,
And flashing fitfully from her shuddering
tombs,
Commissioned Angels of the new-born Faith,
To teach the immortality of Good,
The soul's God-likeness, Sin's coeval death,
And man's indissoluble Brotherhood.
Yet never an age, when God has need of him,
And, lying down at night for a last sleeping,
Say in that ear
Which hearkens ever: "Lord, within thy keeping
How should I fear?
Shall want its Man, predestined by that need, And when to-morrow brings thee nearer still,
To pour his life in fiery word or deed, -
The strong Archangel of the Elohim!
Earth's hollow want is prophet of his coming:
In the low murmur of her famished cry,
And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly,
Ye hear the near invisible humming
Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky
Into cool ripples of new life and hope,
While far in its dissolving ether ope
Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm, to cheer
With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and Here.
Father! thy will be done!
Holy and righteous One!
Though the reluctant years
May never crown my throbbing brows with
white,
Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light
Of my thick locks to wisdom's royal ermine :
Yet by the solitary tears,
Deeper than joy or sorrow, by the thrill, The road, although so very long it be, Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germin,
THERE's a legend that's told of a gypsy who When the gypsy anon in her Ethiop hand
Took the infant's diminutive palm,
O, 't was fearful to see how the features she scanned Of the babe in his slumbers so calm !
Well she noted each mark and each furrow that crossed
O'er the tracings of destiny's line: "WHENCE CAME YE?" she cried, in astonishment lost,
"FOR THIS CHILD IS OF LINEAGE DIVINE!"
'From the village of Nazareth," Joseph replied, Where we dwelt in the land of the Jew, We have fled from a tyrant whose garment is dyed
In the gore of the children he slew :
We were told to remain till an angel's command
Should appoint us the hour to return;
But till then we inhabit the foreigners' land,
And in Egypt we make our sojourn.”
"Then ye tarry with me," cried the gypsy in joy, "And ye make of my dwelling your home;
nd there came an old man from the desert one Many years have I prayed that the Israelite boy
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