Part 12

23.

Nothing can draw the heart of man but good; Low good it is that draws him from the higher-- So evil--poison uncreate from food. Never a foul thing, with temptation dire, Tempts hellward force created to aspire, But walks in wronged strength of imprisoned Truth, Whose mantle also oft the Shame indu'th.

24.

Love in the prime not yet I understand-- Scarce know the love that loveth at first hand: Help me my selfishness to scatter and scout; Blow on me till my love loves burningly; Then the great love will burn the mean self out, And I, in glorious simplicity, Living by love, shall love unspeakably.

25.

Oh, make my anger pure--let no worst wrong Rouse in me the old niggard selfishness. Give me thine indignation--which is love Turned on the evil that would part love's throng; Thy anger scathes because it needs must bless, Gathering into union calm and strong All things on earth, and under, and above.

26.

Make my forgiveness downright--such as I Should perish if I did not have from thee; I let the wrong go, withered up and dry, Cursed with divine forgetfulness in me. 'Tis but self-pity, pleasant, mean, and sly, Low whispering bids the paltry memory live:-- What am I brother for, but to forgive!

27.

"Thou art my father's child--come to my heart:" Thus must I say, or Thou must say, "Depart;" Thus I would say--I would be as thou art; Thus I must say, or still I work athwart The absolute necessity and law That dwells in me, and will me asunder draw, If in obedience I leave any flaw.

28.

Lord, I forgive--and step in unto thee. If I have enemies, Christ deal with them: He hath forgiven me and Jerusalem. Lord, set me from self-inspiration free, And let me live and think from thee, not me-- Rather, from deepest me then think and feel, At centre of thought's swift-revolving wheel.

29.

I sit o'ercanopied with Beauty's tent, Through which flies many a golden-winged dove, Well watched of Fancy's tender eyes up bent; A hundred Powers wait on me, ministering; A thousand treasures Art and Knowledge bring; Will, Conscience, Reason tower the rest above; But in the midst, alone, I gladness am and love.

30.

'Tis but a vision, Lord; I do not mean That thus I am, or have one moment been-- 'Tis but a picture hung upon my wall, To measure dull contentment therewithal, And know behind the human how I fall;-- A vision true, of what one day shall be, When thou hast had thy very will with me.

JULY.

ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep! Moaning, poor Fancy's doves are swept away. I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep, My consciousness the blackness all astir. No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer-- For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep, Who dwellest only in the living day?

It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent, Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent-- Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes! Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks! Or are they loose, roaming about the bent, The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?-- My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.

Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine-- Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine: All things are thine to save or to destroy-- Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy; Love primal, the live coal of every night, Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright, And fill my tent with laughing morn's delight.

Master, thou workest with such common things-- Low souls, weak hearts, I mean--and hast to use, Therefore, such common means and rescuings, That hard we find it, as we sit and muse, To think thou workest in us verily: Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews-- That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.

Thou art hampered in thy natural working then When beings designed on freedom's holy plan Will not be free: with thy poor, foolish men, Thou therefore hast to work just like a man. But when, tangling thyself in their sore need, Thou hast to freedom fashioned them indeed, Then wilt thou grandly move, and Godlike speed.

Will this not then show grandest fact of all-- In thy creation victory most renowned-- That thou hast wrought thy will by slow and small, And made men like thee, though thy making bound By that which they were not, and could not be Until thou mad'st them make along with thee?-- Master, the tardiness is but in me.

Hence come thy checks--because I still would run My head into the sand, nor flutter aloft Towards thy home, with thy wind under me. 'Tis because I am mean, thy ways so oft Look mean to me; my rise is low begun; But scarce thy will doth grasp me, ere I see, For my arrest and rise, its stern necessity.

Like clogs upon the pinions of thy plan We hang--like captives on thy chariot-wheels, Who should climb up and ride with Death's conqueror; Therefore thy train along the world's highway steals So slow to the peace of heart-reluctant man. What shall we do to spread the wing and soar, Nor straiten thy deliverance any more?

The sole way to put flight into the wing, To preen its feathers, and to make them grow, Is to heed humbly every smallest thing With which the Christ in us has aught to do. So will the Christ from child to manhood go, Obedient to the father Christ, and so Sweet holy change will turn all our old things to new.

10.

Creation thou dost work by faint degrees, By shade and shadow from unseen beginning; Far, far apart, in unthought mysteries Of thy own dark, unfathomable seas, Thou will'st thy will; and thence, upon the earth-- Slow travelling, his way through centuries winning-- A child at length arrives at never ending birth.