THE WORD.
Voice of the Holy Spirit, making known Man to himself, a witness swift and sure, Warning, approving, true and wise and pure, Counsel and guidance that misleadeth none!
By thee the mystery of life is read; The picture-writing of the world's gray seers, The myths and parables of the primal years, Whose letter kills, by thee interpreted Take healthful meanings fitted to our needs, And in the soul's vernacular express The common law of simple righteousness.
Hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds May well be felt: the unpardonable sin Is to deny the Word of God within!
1881.
THE BOOK.
Gallery of sacred pictures manifold, A minster rich in holy effigies, And bearing on entablature and frieze The hieroglyphic oracles of old.
Along its transept aureoled martyrs sit; And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint The eye with shrines of prophet, bard, and saint, Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ!
But only when on form and word obscure Falls from above the white supernal light We read the mystic characters aright, And life informs the silent portraiture, Until we pause at last, awe-held, before The One ineffable Face, love, wonder, and adore.
1881
REQUIREMENT.
We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's, Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds.
What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master's footprints in our daily ways?
No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life Whose very breathing is unworded praise!-- A life that stands as all true lives have stood, Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.
1881.
HELP.
Dream not, O Soul, that easy is the task Thus set before thee. If it proves at length, As well it may, beyond thy natural strength, Faint not, despair not. As a child may ask A father, pray the Everlasting Good For light and guidance midst the subtle snares Of sin thick planted in life's thoroughfares, For spiritual strength and moral hardihood; Still listening, through the noise of time and sense, To the still whisper of the Inward Word; Bitter in blame, sweet in approval heard, Itself its own confirming evidence To health of soul a voice to cheer and please, To guilt the wrath of the Eumenides.
1881.
UTTERANCE.
But what avail inadequate words to reach The innermost of Truth? Who shall essay, Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, Or solve the mystery in familiar speech?
Yet, if it be that something not thy own, Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, Is even to thy unworthiness made known, Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine The real seem false, the beauty undivine.
So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need.
1881.
ORIENTAL MAXIMS.
PARAPHRASE OF SANSCRIT TRANSLATIONS.
THE INWARD JUDGE.
From Institutes of Manu.
The soul itself its awful witness is.
Say not in evil doing, "No one sees,"
And so offend the conscious One within, Whose ear can hear the silences of sin.
Ere they find voice, whose eyes unsleeping see The secret motions of iniquity.
Nor in thy folly say, "I am alone."
For, seated in thy heart, as on a throne, The ancient Judge and Witness liveth still, To note thy act and thought; and as thy ill Or good goes from thee, far beyond thy reach, The solemn Doomsman's seal is set on each.
1878.
LAYING UP TREASURE
From the Mahabharata.
Before the Ender comes, whose charioteer Is swift or slow Disease, lay up each year Thy harvests of well-doing, wealth that kings Nor thieves can take away. When all the things Thou tallest thine, goods, pleasures, honors fall, Thou in thy virtue shalt survive them all.
1881.
CONDUCT
From the Mahabharata.
Heed how thou livest. Do no act by day Which from the night shall drive thy peace away.
In months of sun so live that months of rain Shall still be happy. Evermore restrain Evil and cherish good, so shall there be Another and a happier life for thee.
1881.