When the hours of day are numbered,
And the voices of the night
Wake the better soul that slumbered
To a holy, calm delight,—
Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door...
Within this lowly grave a Conqueror lies,
And yet the monument proclaims it not,
Nor round the sleeper’s name hath chisel wrought
The emblems of a fame that never dies,
Ivy and amaranth in a graceful sheaf,
Twined with the laurel’s fair, imperial leaf.
A simple name alone,
To the great world unknown,
Is graven here...
Good-bye, proud world, I’m going home:
Thou art not my friend, and I’m not thine.
Long through thy weary crowds I roam;
A river-ark on the ocean brine,
Long I’ve been tossed like the driven foam,
But now, proud world, I’m going home.
Good-bye to Flattery’s fawning face;
To Grandeur with his wise grimace;
To upstart Wealth’s...
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,—
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,—one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on:
I loved to choose and see my path, but now...
O Friends! with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.
I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.
But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:...
He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save.
So rang Tertullian’s sentence, on the side
Of that unpitying Phrygian Sect which cried:
“Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,
Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave.”—
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,
The infant Church! of love she felt the tide
Stream on her...
Two sayings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church’s brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest,
And heart-deep in salt tears, do yet entreat
God’s fellowship, as if on heavenly seat.
The first is Jesus wept, whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:...
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him;
The little gray leaves were kind to Him;
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content....
The Midday sun, with fiercest glare,
Broods over the hazy, twinkling air;
Along the level sand
The palm-tree’s shade unwavering lies,
Just as thy towers, Damascus, rise
To greet yon wearied band.
The leader of that martial crew
Seems bent some mighty deed to do,
So steadily he speeds,
With lips firm closed...
From “Anima Mundi”
GOD is good,
And flight is destined for the callow wing,
And the high appetite implies the food,
And souls most reach the level whence they spring;
O Life of very life! set free our powers,
Hasten the travail of the yearning hours.
Thou, to whom old Philosophy bent low,
To the wise...
