Chapter 3

Afresh I seek thee. Lead me--once more I pray-- Even should it be against my will, thy way. Let me not feel thee foreign any hour, Or shrink from thee as an estranged power. Through doubt, through faith, through bliss, through stark dismay, Through sunshine, wind, or snow, or fog, or shower, Draw me to thee who art my only day.

16.

I would go near thee--but I cannot press Into thy presence--it helps not to presume. Thy doors are deeds; the handles are their doing. He whose day-life is obedient righteousness, Who, after failure, or a poor success, Rises up, stronger effort yet renewing-- He finds thee, Lord, at length, in his own common room.

17.

Lord, thou hast carried me through this evening's duty; I am released, weary, and well content. O soul, put on the evening dress of beauty, Thy sunset-flush, of gold and purple blent!-- Alas, the moment I turn to my heart, Feeling runs out of doors, or stands apart! But such as I am, Lord, take me as thou art.

18.

The word he then did speak, fits now as then, For the same kind of men doth mock at it. God-fools, God-drunkards these do call the men Who think the poverty of their all not fit, Borne humbly by their art, their voice, their pen, Save for its allness, at thy feet to fling, For whom all is unfit that is not everything.

19.

O Christ, my life, possess me utterly. Take me and make a little Christ of me. If I am anything but thy father's son, 'Tis something not yet from the darkness won. Oh, give me light to live with open eyes. Oh, give me life to hope above all skies. Give me thy spirit to haunt the Father with my cries.

20.

'Tis hard for man to rouse his spirit up-- It is the human creative agony, Though but to hold the heart an empty cup, Or tighten on the team the rigid rein. Many will rather lie among the slain Than creep through narrow ways the light to gain-- Than wake the will, and be born bitterly.

21.

But he who would be born again indeed, Must wake his soul unnumbered times a day, And urge himself to life with holy greed; Now ope his bosom to the Wind's free play; And now, with patience forceful, hard, lie still, Submiss and ready to the making will, Athirst and empty, for God's breath to fill.

22.

All times are thine whose will is our remede. Man turns to thee, thou hast not turned away; The look he casts, thy labour that did breed-- It is thy work, thy business all the day: That look, not foregone fitness, thou dost heed. For duty absolute how be fitter than now? Or learn by shunning?--Lord, I come; help thou.

23.

Ever above my coldness and my doubt Rises up something, reaching forth a hand: This thing I know, but cannot understand. Is it the God in me that rises out Beyond my self, trailing it up with him, Towards the spirit-home, the freedom-land, Beyond my conscious ken, my near horizon's brim?

24.

O God of man, my heart would worship all My fellow men, the flashes from thy fire; Them in good sooth my lofty kindred call, Born of the same one heart, the perfect sire; Love of my kind alone can set me free; Help me to welcome all that come to me, Not close my doors and dream solitude liberty!

25.

A loving word may set some door ajar Where seemed no door, and that may enter in Which lay at the heart of that same loving word. In my still chamber dwell thou always, Lord; Thy presence there will carriage true afford; True words will flow, pure of design to win; And to my men my door shall have no bar.

26.

My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not; I think thy answers make me what I am. Like weary waves thought follows upon thought, But the still depth beneath is all thine own, And there thou mov'st in paths to us unknown. Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought; If the lion in us pray--thou answerest the lamb.

27.

So bound in selfishness am I, so chained, I know it must be glorious to be free But know not what, full-fraught, the word doth mean. By loss on loss I have severely gained Wisdom enough my slavery to see; But liberty, pure, absolute, serene, No freëst-visioned slave has ever seen.

28.

For, that great freedom how should such as I Be able to imagine in such a self? Less hopeless far the miser man might try To image the delight of friend-shared pelf. Freedom is to be like thee, face and heart; To know it, Lord, I must be as thou art, I cannot breed the imagination high.

29.

Yet hints come to me from the realm unknown; Airs drift across the twilight border land, Odoured with life; and as from some far strand Sea-murmured, whispers to my heart are blown That fill me with a joy I cannot speak, Yea, from whose shadow words drop faint and weak: Thee, God, I shadow in that region grand.

30.

O Christ, who didst appear in Judah land, Thence by the cross go back to God's right hand, Plain history, and things our sense beyond, In thee together come and correspond: How rulest thou from the undiscovered bourne The world-wise world that laughs thee still to scorn? Please, Lord, let thy disciple understand.

31.

'Tis heart on heart thou rulest. Thou art the same At God's right hand as here exposed to shame, And therefore workest now as thou didst then-- Feeding the faint divine in humble men. Through all thy realms from thee goes out heart-power, Working the holy, satisfying hour, When all shall love, and all be loved again.

JUNE.

1.

FROM thine, as then, the healing virtue goes Into our hearts--that is the Father's plan. From heart to heart it sinks, it steals, it flows, From these that know thee still infecting those. Here is my heart--from thine, Lord, fill it up, That I may offer it as the holy cup Of thy communion to my every man.

2.

When thou dost send out whirlwinds on thy seas, Alternatest thy lightning with its roar, Thy night with morning, and thy clouds with stars Or, mightier force unseen in midst of these, Orderest the life in every airy pore; Guidest men's efforts, rul'st mishaps and jars,-- 'Tis only for their hearts, and nothing more.

3.

This, this alone thy father careth for-- That men should live hearted throughout with thee-- Because the simple, only life thou art, Of the very truth of living, the pure heart. For this, deep waters whelm the fruitful lea, Wars ravage, famine wastes, plague withers, nor Shall cease till men have chosen the better part.

4.

But, like a virtuous medicine, self-diffused Through all men's hearts thy love shall sink and float; Till every feeling false, and thought unwise, Selfish, and seeking, shall, sternly disused, Wither, and die, and shrivel up to nought; And Christ, whom they did hang 'twixt earth and skies, Up in the inner world of men arise.

5.

Make me a fellow worker with thee, Christ; Nought else befits a God-born energy; Of all that's lovely, only lives the highest, Lifing the rest that it shall never die. Up I would be to help thee--for thou liest Not, linen-swathed in Joseph's garden-tomb, But walkest crowned, creation's heart and bloom.

6.

My God, when I would lift my heart to thee, Imagination instantly doth set A cloudy something, thin, and vast, and vague, To stand for him who is the fact of me; Then up the Will, and doth her weakness plague To pay the heart her duty and her debt, Showing the face that hearkeneth to the plea.

7.

And hence it comes that thou at times dost seem To fade into an image of my mind; I, dreamer, cover, hide thee up with dream,-- Thee, primal, individual entity!-- No likeness will I seek to frame or find, But cry to that which thou dost choose to be, To that which is my sight, therefore I cannot see.

8.

No likeness? Lo, the Christ! Oh, large Enough! I see, yet fathom not the face he wore. He is--and out of him there is no stuff To make a man. Let fail me every spark Of blissful vision on my pathway rough, I have seen much, and trust the perfect more, While to his feet my faith crosses the wayless dark.

9.

Faith is the human shadow of thy might. Thou art the one self-perfect life, and we Who trust thy life, therein join on to thee, Taking our part in self-creating light. To trust is to step forward out of the night-- To be--to share in the outgoing Will That lives and is, because outgoing still.

10.

I am lost before thee, Father! yet I will Claim of thee my birthright ineffable. Thou lay'st it on me, son, to claim thee, sire; To that which thou hast made me, I aspire; To thee, the sun, upflames thy kindled fire. No man presumes in that to which he was born; Less than the gift to claim, would be the giver to scorn.

11.

Henceforth all things thy dealings are with me For out of thee is nothing, or can be, And all things are to draw us home to thee. What matter that the knowers scoffing say, "This is old folly, plain to the new day"?-- If thou be such as thou, and they as they, Unto thy Let there be, they still must answer Nay.

12.

They will not, therefore cannot, do not know him. Nothing they could know, could be God. In sooth, Unto the true alone exists the truth. They say well, saying Nature doth not show him: Truly she shows not what she cannot show; And they deny the thing they cannot know. Who sees a glory, towards it will go.

13.

Faster no step moves God because the fool Shouts to the universe God there is none; The blindest man will not preach out the sun, Though on his darkness he should found a school. It may be, when he finds he is not dead, Though world and body, sight and sound are fled, Some eyes may open in his foolish head.

14.

When I am very weary with hard thought, And yet the question burns and is not quenched, My heart grows cool when to remembrance wrought That thou who know'st the light-born answer sought Know'st too the dark where the doubt lies entrenched-- Know'st with what seemings I am sore perplexed, And that with thee I wait, nor needs my soul be vexed.

15.

Who sets himself not sternly to be good, Is but a fool, who judgment of true things Has none, however oft the claim renewed. And he who thinks, in his great plenitude, To right himself, and set his spirit free, Without the might of higher communings, Is foolish also--save he willed himself to be.

16.

How many helps thou giv'st to those would learn! To some sore pain, to others a sinking heart; To some a weariness worse than any smart; To some a haunting, fearing, blind concern; Madness to some; to some the shaking dart Of hideous death still following as they turn; To some a hunger that will not depart.

17.

To some thou giv'st a deep unrest--a scorn Of all they are or see upon the earth; A gaze, at dusky night and clearing morn, As on a land of emptiness and dearth; To some a bitter sorrow; to some the sting Of love misprized--of sick abandoning; To some a frozen heart, oh, worse than anything!

18.

To some a mocking demon, that doth set The poor foiled will to scoff at the ideal, But loathsome makes to them their life of jar. The messengers of Satan think to mar, But make--driving the soul from false to feal-- To thee, the reconciler, the one real, In whom alone the would be and the is are met.

19.

Me thou hast given an infinite unrest, A hunger--not at first after known good, But something vague I knew not, and yet would-- The veiled Isis, thy will not understood; A conscience tossing ever in my breast; And something deeper, that will not be expressed, Save as the Spirit thinking in the Spirit's brood.

20.

But now the Spirit and I are one in this-- My hunger now is after righteousness; My spirit hopes in God to set me free From the low self loathed of the higher me. Great elder brother of my second birth, Dear o'er all names but one, in heaven or earth, Teach me all day to love eternally.

21.

Lo, Lord, thou know'st, I would not anything That in the heart of God holds not its root; Nor falsely deem there is any life at all That doth in him nor sleep nor shine nor sing; I know the plants that bear the noisome fruit Of burning and of ashes and of gall-- From God's heart torn, rootless to man's they cling.

22.

Life-giving love rots to devouring fire; Justice corrupts to despicable revenge; Motherhood chokes in the dam's jealous mire; Hunger for growth turns fluctuating change; Love's anger grand grows spiteful human wrath, Hunting men out of conscience' holy path; And human kindness takes the tattler's range.

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.

1.

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?

2.

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.

3.

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.

4.

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.

5.

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.

6.

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.

7.

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.

8.

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?

9.

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.

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.