POEMS FROM THE INNER LIFE. PART I. |
THE PRAYER OF THE SORROWING.
“And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven strengthening him.” God! hear my prayer!
Thou who hast poured the essence of thy life
Into this urn, this feeble urn of clay;
Thou who amid the tempest’s gloom and strife
Art the lone star that guides me on my way;
When my crushed heart, by constant striving torn,
Flies shuddering from its own impurity,
And my faint spirit, by its sorrows worn,
Turns with a cry of anguish unto thee—
Hear me, O God! my God!
O, this strange mingling in of Life and Death,
Of Soul and Substance! Let me comprehend
The hidden secret of life’s fleeting breath,
My being’s destiny, its aim and end.
Show me the impetus that urged me forth,
Upon my lone and burning pathway driven;
The secret force that binds me down to earth,
While my sad spirit yearns for home and heaven—
Hear me, O God! my God!
The ruby life-drops from my heart are wrung,
By the deep conflict of my soul in prayer;
The words lie burning on my feeble tongue;
Aid me, O Father! let me not despair.
Save, Lord! I perish! Save me, ere I die!
My rebel spirit mocks at thy control—
The raging billows rise to drown my cry;
The floods of anguish overwhelm my soul—
Hear me, O God! my God!
Peace! peace! O, wilful, wayward heart, be still!
For, lo! the messenger of God is near;
Bow down submissive to the Father’s will,
In “perfect love” that “casteth out all fear.”
O, pitying Spirit from the home above!
No longer shall my chastened heart rebel;
Fold me, O fold me in thine arms of love!
I know my Father “doeth all things well;”
I will not doubt his changeless love again.
Amen! My heart repeats, Amen!
THE SONG OF TRUTH. From the unseen throne of the Great Unknown,
From the Soul of All, I came;
Not with the rock of the earthquake’s shock,
And not with the wasting flame.
But silent and deep is my onward sweep,
Through the depths of the boundless sky;
I stand sublime, through the lapse of time,
And where God is, there am I.
In the early years, when the youthful spheres,
From the depths of Chaos sprung,
When the heavens grew bright with the new-born light,
And the stars in chorus sung—
To that holy sound, through the space profound,
’Mid their glittering ranks I trod;
For I am a part of the Central Heart,
Co-equal and one with God.
The world is my child. Though wilful and wild,
Yet I know that she loves me still,
For she thinks I fled with her holy dead,
Because of her stubborn will;
And she weeps at night, when the angels light
Their watch-fires over the sky,
Like a maid o’er the grave of her loved and brave;
But the Truth can never die.
One by one, like sparks from the sun,
I have counted the souls that came
From the hand Divine;—all, all are mine,
And I call them by my name.
One by one, like sparks to the sun,
I shall see them all return;
Though tempest-tost, yet they are not lost,
And not one shall cease to burn.
I only speak to the lowly and meek,
To the simple and child-like heart,
But I leave the proud to their glittering shroud,
And the tricks of their cunning art.
Like a white-winged dove from the home of love,
Through the airy space untrod,
I come at the cry which is heard on high,—
“Hear me, O God! my God!”
THE EMBARKATION. “So they left that goodly and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place near twelve years. But they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much to those things; but lifted their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”—E. Winslow. The band of Pilgrim exiles in tearful silence stood,
While thus outspake, in parting, John Robinson the good:
“Fare thee well, my brave Miles Standish! thou hast a trusty sword,
But not with carnal weapons shalt thou glorify the Lord.
Fare thee well, good Elder Brewster! thou art a man of prayer;
Commend the flock I give thee to the holy Shepherd’s care.
And thou, belovÉd Carver, what shall I say to thee?
I have need, in this my sorrow, that thou shouldst comfort me.
In the furnace of affliction must all be sharply tried;
But nought prevails against us, if the Lord be on our side.
Farewell, farewell, my people!—go, and stay not the hand,
But precious seed of Freedom sow ye broadcast through the land.
Ye may scatter it in sorrow, and water it with tears,
But rejoice for those who gather the fruit in after years;
Ay! rejoice that ye may leave them an altar unto God,
On the holy soil of Freedom, where no tyrant’s foot hath trod.
All honor to our sovereign, his majesty King James,
But the King of kings above us the highest homage claims.”
Upon the deck together they knelt them down and prayed,
The husband and the father, the matron and the maid;
The broad blue heavens above them, bright with the summer’s glow,
And the wide, wide waste of waters, with its treacherous waves below;
Around, the loved and cherished, whom they should see no more,
And the dark, uncertain future stretching dimly on before.
O, well might Edward Winslow look sadly on his bride!
O, well might fair Rose Standish press to her chieftain’s side!
For with crucified affections they bowed the knee in prayer,
And besought that God would aid them to suffer and to bear;
To bear the cross of sorrow—a broader shield of love
Than the Royal Cross of England, that proudly waved above.
The balmy winds of summer swept o’er the glittering seas;
It brought the sign of parting—the white sails met the breeze;
One farewell gush of sorrow, one prayerful blessing more,
And the bark that bore the exiles glided slowly from the shore.
“Thus they left that goodly city,” o’er stormy seas to roam;
“But they knew that they were pilgrims,” and this world was not their home.
There is a God in heaven, whose purpose none may tell;
There is a God in heaven, who doeth all things well:
And thus an infant nation was cradled on the deep,
While hosts of holy angels were set to guard its sleep;
No seer, no priest, or prophet, read its horoscope at birth,
No bard in solemn saga sung its destiny to earth,
But slowly,—slowly,—slowly as the acorn from the sod,
It grew in strength and grandeur, and spread its arms abroad;
The eyes of distant nations turned towards that goodly tree,
And they saw how fair and pleasant were the fruits of Liberty!
Like earth’s convulsive motion before the earthquake’s shock,
Like the foaming of the ocean around old Plymouth Rock,
So the deathless love of Freedom—the majesty of Right—
In all kindred, and all nations, is rising in its might;
And words of solemn warning come from the honored dead—
“Woe, woe to the oppressor if righteous blood be shed!
Rush not blindly on the future! heed the lessons of the past!
For the feeble and the faithful are the conquerors at last.”
KEPLER’S VISION. “How grand the spectacle of a mind thus restless—thirsting with unquenchable appetite after beauty and harmony! Never was there a finer example of a spirit too vast to be satiated with the few truths around it, or one that more emphatically foreboded a necessary immortality.”—Prof. R. P. Nichol. Amo—amare—amavi—amatum.[A] Dear girls, never marry for knowledge,
(Though that should of course form a part,)
For often the head, in a college,
Gets wise at the cost of the heart.
Let me tell you a fact that is real—
I once had a beau in my youth,
My brightest and best “beau ideal”
Of manliness, goodness, and truth.
O, he talked of the Greeks and the Romans,
Of Normans, and Saxons, and Celts,
And he quoted from Virgil, and Homer,
And Plato, and —— somebody else.
And he told me his deathless affection,
By means of a thousand strange herbs,
With numberless words in connection,
Derived from the roots of Greek verbs.
One night, as a sly innuendo,
When Nature was mantled in snow,
He wrote in the frost on the window,
A sweet word in Latin—“amo.”
O, it needed no words for expression,
For that I had long understood;
But there was his written confession—
Present tense and indicative mood.
But O, how man’s passion will vary!
For scarcely a year had passed by,
When he changed the “amo” to “amare,”
But instead of an “e” was a “y.”
Yes, a Mary had certainly taken
The heart once so fondly my own,
And I, the rejected, forsaken,
Was left to reflection alone.
Since then I’ve a horror of Latin,
And students uncommonly smart;
True love, one should always put that in,
To balance the head by the heart.
To be a fine scholar and linguist
Is much to one’s credit, I know,
But “I love” should be said in plain English,
And not with a Latin “amo.”
THE FATE OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. “In March, of 1854, says the Cleveland Herald, several months before the arrival of Dr. Rae, with his news of the probable death of the brave Sir John Franklin and his faithful comrades, we copied from the Lily of the Valley for 1854, a beautiful poem by Miss Lizzie Doten, in reference to these adventurers. The verses are touching and solemn as the sound of a passing bell, and appear almost prophetic of the news that afterwards came. ‘The Song of the North’ again becomes deeply interesting as connected with the thrilling account brought home by the Fox—the last vessel sent in search of the lost adventurers to the icy North, and the last that will now ever be sent on such an expedition.”—Buffalo Daily Republic. SONG OF THE NORTH. “Away, away!” cried the stout Sir John,
“While the blossoms are on the trees,
For the summer is short, and the times speeds on
As we sail for the northern seas.
Ho! gallant Crozier, and brave Fitz James!
We will startle the world, I trow,
When we find a way through the Northern seas
That never was found till now!
A good stout ship is the ‘Erebus,’
As ever unfurled a sail,
And the ‘Terror’ will match with as brave a one
As ever outrode a gale.”
So they bade farewell to their pleasant homes,
To the hills and the valleys green,
With three hearty cheers for their native isle,
And three for the English Queen.
They sped them away, beyond cape and bay,
Where the day and the night are one—
Where the hissing light in the heavens grew bright,
And flamed like a midnight sun.
There was nought below, save the fields of snow,
That stretched to the icy pole;
And the Esquimaux, in his strange canoe,
Was the only living soul!
Along the coast, like a giant host,
The glittering icebergs frowned,
Or they met on the main, like a battle plain,
And crashed with a fearful sound!
The seal and the bear, with a curious stare,
Looked down from the frozen heights,
And the stars in the skies, with their great, wild eyes,
Peered out from the Northern Lights.
The gallant Crozier, and brave Fitz James,
And even the stout Sir John,
Felt a doubt, like a chill, through their warm hearts thrill,
As they urged the good ships on.
They sped them away, beyond cape and bay,
Where even the tear-drops freeze,
But no way was found, by a strait or sound,
To sail through the Northern seas;
They sped them away, beyond cape and bay,
And they sought, but they sought in vain,
For no way was found, through the ice around,
To return to their homes again.
Then the wild waves rose, and the waters froze,
Till they closed like a prison wall;
And the icebergs stood in the sullen flood,
Like their jailers, grim and tall.
O God! O God!—it was hard to die
In that prison house of ice!
For what was fame, or a mighty name,
When life was the fearful price?
The gallant Crozier, and brave Fitz James,
And even the stout Sir John,
Had a secret dread, and their hopes all fled,
As the weeks and the months passed on.
Then the Ice King came, with his eyes of flame,
And looked on that fated crew;
His chilling breath was as cold as death,
And it pierced their warm hearts through!
A heavy sleep, that was dark and deep,
Came over their weary eyes,
And they dreamed strange dreams of the hills and streams,
And the blue of their native skies.
The Christmas chimes, of the good old times,
Were heard in each dying ear,
And the dancing feet, and the voices sweet
Of their wives and their children dear!
But it faded away—away—away!
Like a sound on a distant shore,
And deeper and deeper grew the sleep,
Till they slept to wake no more.
O, the sailor’s wife, and the sailor’s child,
They will weep, and watch, and pray;
And the Lady Jane, she will hope in vain,
As the long years pass away!
The gallant Crozier, and brave Fitz James,
And the good Sir John have found
An open way, to a quiet bay,
And a port where we all are bound!
Let the waters roar on the ice-bound shore,
That circles the frozen pole;
But there is no sleep, and no grave so deep,
That can hold a human soul.
THE BURIAL OF WEBSTER. Low and solemn be the requiem above the nation’s dead;
Let fervent prayers be uttered, and farewell blessings said!
Close by the sheltering homestead, beneath the household tree,
Where oft his footsteps lingered, here let the parting be!
Draw near in solemn silence, with slow and measured tread;
Come with the brow uncovered, and gaze upon the dead!
How like a fallen hero, in silent rest he lies!
With the seal of Death upon him, and its dimness in his eyes!
Speak! but there comes no answer. That voice of power is still
Which woke the slumbering Senate as with a giant’s will!—
That voice, which rang so proudly back from the echoing walls,
In court and civic council, and legislative halls;
Which summoned back those spirits, who long were mute and still,—
The Pilgrim sires of Plymouth—the dead of Bunker Hill,—
And in their silent presence gave to the past a tongue
Like that which roused the nations when Freedom’s war-cry rung.
But now, the roar of cannon, the thunder of the deep,
The battle-shock of earthquakes, cannot wake him from his sleep!
The foot that trod so proudly upon the earth’s green sod,
The manly form, created in the image of its God,
The brow, where mental greatness had set her noblest seal,
The lip, whence thoughts were uttered like shafts of polished steel,—
All, all of these shall moulder back to their parent earth,
Back to the silent bosom from whence they sprang to birth!
The man,—the living Webster—passed with a fleeting breath!
Alas, for human greatness!—the end thereof is death!
O! what is earthly glory? Ask CÆsar, when he fell
At the base of Pompey’s statue, slain by those he loved too well;
Ask the Carthaginian hero, who kept his fearful vow;
Ask Napoleon in his exile; ask the dead before ye now;—
And one answer, and one only, in the light of truth is given:
“Man’s highest earthly glory is to do the will of Heaven;
To rise and battle bravely, with dauntless moral might,
In the holy cause of Freedom, and the triumph of the Right!”
For by this simple standard shall all at last be tried,
And not by earthly glory, or works of human pride.
O Webster! thou wast mighty among thy fellow-men;
And he who seeks to judge thee must be what thou hast been;—
Must feel thine aspirations for higher aims in life,
And know the stern temptations that urged thee in the strife;
Must let his heart flow largely from out its narrow span,
And meet thee freely, fairly, as man should meet with man.
What was lost, and what resisted, is known to One alone:
Then let him who stands here guiltless “be first to cast a stone”!
Farewell! We give, with mourning, back to thy mother Earth
The robes thy soul rejected at its celestial birth!
A mightier one and stronger may stand where thou wast tried,
Yet he shall be the wiser that thou hast lived and died;
Thy greatness be his glory, thine errors let him shun,
And let him finish nobly what thou hast left undone.
Farewell! The granite mountains, the hill-side, and the sea,
Thy harvest-fields and orchards, will all lament for thee!
Farewell! A mighty nation awards thee deathless fame,
And future generations shall honor Webster’s name!
THE PARTING OF SIGURD AND GERDA. “He is a strong, proud man, such as a woman might, with pride, call her partner—‘if only—O! if he would but understand her nature, and allow it to be worth something.’”—See Miss Bremer’s “Brothers and Sisters.” She stood beneath the moonlight pale,
With calm, uplifted eye,
While all her being, weak and frail,
Thrilled with her purpose high;
For she, the long affianced bride,
Must seal the fount of tears,
And break, with woman’s lofty pride,
The plighted faith of years.
Ay! she had loved as in a dream,
And woke, at length, to find
How coldly on her spirit gleamed
The dazzling light of mind.
For little was the true, deep love
Of that pure spirit known
To him, the cold, the selfish one,
Who claimed her as his own.
And what to him were all her dreams
Of purer, holier life?
Such idle fancies ill became
A meek, submissive wife.
And what were all her yearnings high
For God and “Fatherland”
But vain chimeras, lofty flights,
While Sigurd held her hand?
And then uprose the bitter thought,
“Why bow to his control?
Why sacrifice, before his pride,
The freedom of my soul?
Better to break the golden chain,
And live and love apart,
Than feel the galling, grinding links
Wearing upon my heart.”
He came,—and, with a soft, low voice,
In the pale gleaming light,
She laid her gentle hand in his—
“Sigurd, we part to-night.
Long have these bitter words been kept
Within this heart of mine,
And often have I lonely wept,—
I never can be thine.”
Proudly, with folded arms he stood,
And cold, sarcastic smile—
“Ha! this is but a wayward mood,
An artful woman’s wile.
But this I know: so long—so long
I’ve held thee to thy vow,
That I have made the bond too strong
For thee to break it now.”
“You know me not;—my lofty pride
Was hidden from your eyes;
But you have crushed it down so low
It gives me strength to rise.
O! all my bitter, burning thoughts
I may not, dare not tell!
Sigurd, my loved—forever loved!
Farewell! once more, farewell!”
One moment, and those loving arms
Were gently round him thrown;
One moment, and those quivering lips
Pressed lightly to his own:
And then he stood alone! alone!
With eyes too proud for tears;
Yet o’er his stern, cold heart was thrown
The burning blight of years.
O man! so God-like in thy strength,
PreËminent in mind,
Seek not with these high gifts alone,
A woman’s heart to bind.
For, timid as a shrinking fawn,
Yet faithful as a dove,
She clings through life and death to thee,
Won by thine earnest love.
THE MEETING OF SIGURD AND GERDA. “And beautiful now stood they there, man and woman; no longer pale; eye to eye, hand to hand, as equals,—as partners in the light of heaven.”—See Miss Bremer’s “Brothers and Sisters.” “O, early love! O, early love!
Why does this memory haunt me yet?
Peace! I invoke thee from above,—
I cannot, though I would, forget.
How I have sought, with prayers and tears,
To quench this wasting passion-flame!
But after long, long, weary years,
It burns within my heart the same.”
She wept—poor, sorrowing Gerda wept,
In the dark pine-wood wandering lone,
While cold the night-winds past her swept,
And bright the stars above her shone.
Poor, suffering dove! her song was hushed,
The blithesome song of other days,
Yet, O! when such true hearts are crushed,
They breathe their holiest, sweetest lays.
A step was heard. Her heart beat high;
Through the dim shadows of the wood
She glanced with quick and anxious eye—
Lo! Sigurd by her stood;—
And as the moon’s pale, quivering rays
Stole through that lonely place,
He stood, with calm, impassioned gaze
Fixed on her tearful face.
“Gerda,” he said, “I come to speak
A long, a last farewell;
Some distant land and home I seek,
Far, far from thee to dwell.
O, since I lost thee, gentle one,
My truest and my best,
I have rushed madly, blindly on,
Nor dared to think of rest.
“The night that spreads her starry wing
Beyond the Northern Sea,
Does not a deeper darkness bring
Than that which rests on me.
Yet, no! I will not ask thy tears
For my deep tale of woe;
Forgetfulness will come with years;
Gerda—my love—I go!”
“Stay! Sigurd, stay! O, why depart?
See, at thy feet I bow;
O, cherished idol of my heart,
Reject—reject me now!”
But not upon the cold, damp ground,
Her bended knee she pressed;
Upheld, and firmly clasped around,
She wept upon his breast.
“Reject thee? No! When earth rejects
The sunshine’s summer glow,
When Heaven one suppliant’s prayer neglects,
Then will I bid thee go.
And, by the watching stars above,
And by all things divine,
I swear to cherish and to love
This heart that beats to mine!”
O, holy sense of wrongs forgot,
And injuries forgiven!
The human heart that feels thee not,
Knows not the peace of Heaven.
Ye blessÉd spirits from above,
Who guide us while we live,
O, teach us also how to love,
And freely to forgive.
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