Muse and Mint :: HOMILIES

HOMILIES

Walter Seymour Percy

WHAT IS TRUTH?

Truth is the vision of the skies

That does not ask us to be wise

But just to lift perceiving eyes

Wherever there is living light

To clearer make the way of right

Or soiled humanity more white.

Truth is the meaning of all things

Not to the mind but to the springs

Of love and peace and fashionings;

For what we love is life’s concern

And hope is more than sages learn

And truth is most to which we turn.

Truth is the spirit of all truths

Which from the same supremeness moves

And universal purpose proves;

Truth is the light and not the spheres

Whose laws are known to only seers;

But by the stars the sailor steers.

Truth is the image of its God

Who all its endless vistas trod

And flung His attributes abroad;

For while too rare to minds more dense

Its mirror makes it real to sense

And gives its soul an evidence.

FRIENDSHIP

O Friendship! On life’s crown the pearl

Amidst its jewels rare,

A star for peasant or for earl

The other gems whate’er—

Be diamond on the kingly brow

Or garnet dull on toil,

The hearted radiance art thou,

Of noblest might or moil.

But ah, to only value thee

As treasure of desire

For peerlessness of purity

We gain to but admire;

And not to feel thy inner worth

As stuff of primal deeps,

Some miracle of troubled birth

Where lowly nature creeps!

Is this, O Friendship, worthy of

The praises of the Muse,

Of life so lightly prone to love

But fire to refuse?

If only in our hand we hold

Another’s sacrifice

And give it back no gift of gold,

’Tis not the Pearl of Price.

THOUGHT

Think nobly!

For the things we ponder are the sum

Of what we treasure and we do become

The fashion of our thinking—just as from

The chain we know the linking.

Therefore think nobly!

Think purely!

For our meditation is the glass

Through which our spirit doth in vision pass,

The face of God beholding—and the grace

Of his divine unfolding.

Therefore think purely!

Think truly!

For a true ideal is the light

By which we struggle up the lofty height

Of Truth’s supreme divineness—and the right

To which it doth incline us.

Therefore think truly!

WHEN I’M NO MORE

Will yonder Orient flush with morning hue?

Will on the flowers shine the crystal dew

And Heaven retain its soft cerulean blue

When I’m no more?

Will yet the jasper ocean lap the beach

And woo the wildflower just beyond its reach?

Will yet the treebirds murmur each to each

When I’m no more?

Will yet the laughing brook keep on its way?

Will yet yon moon smile sadly o’er my clay

And those bright twinkling stars dance in the day

When I’m no more?

Will yet a smiling world salute the dawn

And still its course of love and joy flow on—

My image once some heart enshrined soon gone

When I’m no more?

What means this chill misgiving—fate or fear?

Death, rend the veil and calm this dark despair!

Say, tell me will this memory be dear

When I’m no more?

Ah Death, thy only kindness is the bliss

Of answer in love’s fondest parting kiss

That one at least my humbleness will miss

When I’m no more!

THE BLAZED TRAIL

Life is a human wilderness

Where duty, right and truth

Are tangled in the morasses

Of folly, doubt and youth.

I know I cannot hope to cleave

A path through brake and swale,

But I a guiding index leave

If I but blaze the trail.

The forest as I struggle through

By compass, sun and stars

I’ll mark so that another, too,

Can travel by my scars.

From woods where labor would get lost

And feet would err or fail

I’ll single pines on ridges crossed

And blaze on them the trail.

O’er range and river toward the West

I’ll keep and pray to learn

Not what is easiest, but best,

And worth a life’s return;

For though I shall not pass again

The way I thus prevail,

It is my task for other men

To blaze the homebound trail.

GRIEF AND JOY

Grief said there was no gladness

At the season of the Child,

But only memories of sadness

In homes where babes once smiled.

Joy said there was no sorrow,

But found solace in the touch

Of gladness that perhaps to-morrow

Would need our cheer as much.

Grief said that songs awaken

Echoes of our buried love,

As when silent chords are shaken

And still responsive prove.

Joy said it yet were stranger

If our babes made Bethlehem

Not more dear because the manger

Bore Him who gathered them.

Grief said that gifts but mocked us

With the treasures snatched away

And with chains forever locked us

In tombs of memory.

Joy said that gifts were token

Of our love and its domain,

Earnest of our hopes unspoken

Love would get again.

HOPE

I have a hope—’tis spirit-born

And spirit-winged beside;

’Tis like the holy light of morn

When Heaven opens wide.

Hope like the bird whose every note

A loving Father’s hand

Hath tuned within its swelling throat

As though the song were planned!

What is it but the joyous sense

Of love and harmony?

What is it but the evidence

Of life’s divinity?

That hope which makes us most divine

And like to what it clings—

That hope which makes our hearts incline

To higher, holier things—

That hope which spells eternal youth

And goodness infinite—

Hath reason in it strong as truth

And logical as light.

SOWING AND REAPING

Sow on though another age

May do the reaping!

Sow on, for the final wage

Is in the keeping

Of our divinest Master, who declared,

“Sow on, for he shall reap not who hath spared!”

Reap on what another age

Began by sowing!

Reap on, for the highest wage

Is in the knowing

The fruit is garnered and the harvest-song

To sower and to reaper doth belong!

HOPE ON!

Hope on! For there is no rising star

When shadows creep across our sky

More precious than this beam afar

That trembles through eternity.

Hope on! That infinite desire

Is but a foreglimpse of the dawn

Of an immortal, holier and higher

Day of perfection; therefore hope on!

Hope on, lest the heart be cankered

By its own sense of dumb despair!

But rather let the soul be anchored

To the veiled Heaven over there

Where the light trembles through the mist

And hope becomes more lucid faith,

Yea, glad expectancy—for lo, the Christ

Bids life unfold its wings and death

And doubt begone! Therefore hope on!

HEARTED GOOD

Blest be the goodness which is spirit-fruit

Of reverence as worship is of awe,

Till goodness is both ripening and root!

For just as truly as that it doth draw

Its substance from divineness it must shoot

By the same potency of nature’s law.

We may dispense the good we never grew

As those who borrow; or we may profess

The goodness which we know but never do,

And so put on a form of fruitfulness;

But ah, ’tis barren-hearted and untrue

To worthiness, whate’er its outward dress!

To love as well as practise what is fine,

To be what we would fain be taken for,

To ripen from the root whose tendrils twine

Around the very heart whose currents pour

Into the good we do—this is divine

And living fruit that blesses more and more.

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