Part 13

11.

Well mayst thou then work on indocile hearts By small successes, disappointments small; By nature, weather, failure, or sore fall; By shame, anxiety, bitterness, and smarts; By loneliness, by weary loss of zest:-- The rags, the husks, the swine, the hunger-quest, Drive home the wanderer to the father's breast.

12.

How suddenly some rapid turn of thought May throw the life-machine all out of gear, Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt, Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear! Who knows not then where dwells the engineer, Rushes aghast into the pathless night, And wanders in a land of dreary fright.

13.

Amazed at sightless whirring of their wheels, Confounded with the recklessness and strife, Distract with fears of what may next ensue, Some break rude exit from the house of life, And plunge into a silence out of view-- Whence not a cry, no wafture once reveals What door they have broke open with the knife.

14.

Help me, my Father, in whatever dismay, Whatever terror in whatever shape, To hold the faster by thy garment's hem; When my heart sinks, oh, lift it up, I pray; Thy child should never fear though hell should gape, Not blench though all the ills that men affray Stood round him like the Roman round Jerusalem.

15.

Too eager I must not be to understand. How should the work the master goes about Fit the vague sketch my compasses have planned? I am his house--for him to go in and out. He builds me now--and if I cannot see At any time what he is doing with me, 'Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.

16.

The house is not for me--it is for him. His royal thoughts require many a stair, Many a tower, many an outlook fair, Of which I have no thought, and need no care. Where I am most perplexed, it may be there Thou mak'st a secret chamber, holy-dim, Where thou wilt come to help my deepest prayer.

17.

I cannot tell why this day I am ill; But I am well because it is thy will-- Which is to make me pure and right like thee. Not yet I need escape--'tis bearable Because thou knowest. And when harder things Shall rise and gather, and overshadow me, I shall have comfort in thy strengthenings.

18.

How do I live when thou art far away?-- When I am sunk, and lost, and dead in sleep, Or in some dream with no sense in its play? When weary-dull, or drowned in study deep?-- O Lord, I live so utterly on thee, I live when I forget thee utterly-- Not that thou thinkest of, but thinkest me.

19.

Thou far!--that word the holy truth doth blur. Doth the great ocean from the small fish run When it sleeps fast in its low weedy bower? Is the sun far from any smallest flower, That lives by his dear presence every hour? Are they not one in oneness without stir-- The flower the flower because the sun the sun?

20.

"Dear presence every hour"!--what of the night, When crumpled daisies shut gold sadness in; And some do hang the head for lack of light, Sick almost unto death with absence-blight?-- Thy memory then, warm-lingering in the ground, Mourned dewy in the air, keeps their hearts sound, Till fresh with day their lapsed life begin.

21.

All things are shadows of the shining true: Sun, sea, and air--close, potent, hurtless fire-- Flowers from their mother's prison--dove, and dew-- Every thing holds a slender guiding clue Back to the mighty oneness:--hearts of faith Know thee than light, than heat, endlessly nigher, Our life's life, carpenter of Nazareth.

22.

Sometimes, perhaps, the spiritual blood runs slow, And soft along the veins of will doth flow, Seeking God's arteries from which it came. Or does the etherial, creative flame Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?-- It matters not what figure or what name, If thou art in me, and I am not to blame.

23.

In such God-silence, the soul's nest, so long As all is still, no flutter and no song, Is safe. But if my soul begin to act Without some waking to the eternal fact That my dear life is hid with Christ in God-- I think and move a creature of earth's clod, Stand on the finite, act upon the wrong.

24.

My soul this sermon hence for itself prepares:-- "Then is there nothing vile thou mayst not do, Buffeted in a tumult of low cares, And treacheries of the old man 'gainst the new."-- Lord, in my spirit let thy spirit move, Warning, that it may not have to reprove:-- In my dead moments, master, stir the prayers.