A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul - January
1.
LORD, what I once had done with youthful might,
Had I been from the first true to the truth,
Grant me, now old, to do-with better sight,
And humbler heart, if not the brain of youth;
So wilt thou, in thy gentleness and ruth,
Lead back thy old soul, by the path of pain,
Round to his best-young eyes and heart and brain.
2.
A dim aurora rises in my east,
Beyond the line of jagged questions hoar,
As if the head of our intombed High Priest
Began to glow behind the unopened door:
Sure the gold wings will soon rise from the gray!-
They rise not. Up I rise, press on the more,
To meet the slow coming of the Master’s day.
3.
Sometimes I wake, and, lo! I have forgot,
And drifted out upon an ebbing sea!
My soul that was at rest now resteth not,
For I am with myself and not with thee;
Truth seems a blind moon in a glaring morn,
Where nothing is but sick-heart vanity:
Oh, thou who knowest! save thy child forlorn.
4.
Death, like high faith, levelling, lifteth all.
When I awake, my daughter and my son,
Grown sister and brother, in my arms shall fall,
Tenfold my girl and boy. Sure every one
Of all the brood to the old wings will run.
Whole-hearted is my worship of the man
From whom my earthly history began.
5.
Thy fishes breathe but where thy waters roll;
Thy birds fly but within thy airy sea;
My soul breathes only in thy infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think,-O Love, live into me;
Unworthy is my life till all divine,
Till thou see in me only what is thine.
6.
Then shall I breathe in sweetest sharing, then
Think in harmonious consort with my kin;
Then shall I love well all my father’s men,
Feel one with theirs the life my heart within.
Oh brothers! sisters holy! hearts divine!
Then I shall be all yours, and nothing mine–
To every human heart a mother-twin.
7.
I see a child before an empty house,
Knocking and knocking at the closed door;
He wakes dull echoes-but nor man nor mouse,
If he stood knocking there for evermore.-
A mother angel, see! folding each wing,
Soft-walking, crosses straight the empty floor,
And opens to the obstinate praying thing.
8.
Were there but some deep, holy spell, whereby
Always I should remember thee-some mode
Of feeling the pure heat-throb momently
Of the spirit—fire still uttering this I!—
Lord, see thou to it, take thou remembrance’ load:
Only when I bethink me can I cry;
Remember thou, and prick me with love’s goad.
9.
If to myself-'God sometimes interferes’-
I said, my faith at once would be struck blind.
I see him all in all, the lifing mind,
Or nowhere in the vacant miles and years.
A love he is that watches and that hears,
Or but a mist fumed up from minds of men,
Whose fear and hope reach out beyond their ken.
10.
When I no more can stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire,-
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
11.
I thought that I had lost thee; but, behold!
Thou comest to me from the horizon low,
Across the fields outspread of green and gold–
Fair carpet for thy feet to come and go.
Whence I know not, or how to me thou art come!-
Not less my spirit with calm bliss doth glow,
Meeting thee only thus, in nature vague and dumb.
12.
Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!
My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,
Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;
In calm, ’tis but a limp and flapping thing:
Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing,-
To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind
Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.
13.
The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;
Faith swells it full to breast the breasting seas.
Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;
Hell’s freezing north no tempest can send out,
But it shall toss thee homeward to thy leas;
Boisterous wave-crest never shall o’erwhelm
Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.
14.
Sometimes, hard—trying, it seems I cannot pray—
For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch-crouch in the bowery breast
Of the large, nation—healing tree of life;—
Moveless there sit through all the burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.
15.
My harvest withers. Health, my means to live–
All things seem rushing straight into the dark.
But the dark still is God. I would not give
The smallest silver-piece to turn the rush
Backward or sideways. Am I not a spark
Of him who is the light?-Fair hope doth flush
My east.-Divine success-Oh, hush and hark!
16.
Thy will be done. I yield up everything.
‘The life is more than meat’-then more than health;
‘The body more than raiment’-then than wealth;
The hairs I made not, thou art numbering.
Thou art my life-I the brook, thou the spring.
Because thine eyes are open, I can see;
Because thou art thyself, ’tis therefore I am me.
17.
No sickness can come near to blast my health;
My life depends not upon any meat;
My bread comes not from any human tilth;
No wings will grow upon my changeless wealth;
Wrong cannot touch it, violence or deceit;
Thou art my life, my health, my bank, my barn–
And from all other gods thou plain dost warn.
18.
Care thou for mine whom I must leave behind;
Care that they know who ’tis for them takes care;
Thy present patience help them still to bear;
Lord, keep them clearing, growing, heart and mind;
In one thy oneness us together bind;
Last earthly prayer with which to thee I cling–
Grant that, save love, we owe not anything.
19.
’Tis well, for unembodied thought a live,
True house to build-of stubble, wood, nor hay;
So, like bees round the flower by which they thrive,
My thoughts are busy with the informing truth,
And as I build, I feed, and grow in youth–
Hoping to stand fresh, clean, and strong, and gay,
When up the east comes dawning His great day.
20.
Thy will is truth-'tis therefore fate, the strong.
Would that my will did sweep full swing with thine!
Then harmony with every spheric song,
And conscious power, would give sureness divine.
Who thinks to thread thy great laws’ onward throng,
Is as a fly that creeps his foolish way
Athwart an engine’s wheels in smooth resistless play.
21.
Thou in my heart hast planted, gardener divine,
A scion of the tree of life: it grows;
But not in every wind or weather it blows;
The leaves fall sometimes from the baby tree,
And the life-power seems melting into pine;
Yet still the sap keeps struggling to the shine,
And the unseen root clings cramplike unto thee.
22.
Do thou, my God, my spirit’s weather control;
And as I do not gloom though the day be dun,
Let me not gloom when earth-born vapours roll
Across the infinite zenith of my soul.
Should sudden brain-frost through the heart’s summer run,
Cold, weary, joyless, waste of air and sun,
Thou art my south, my summer-wind, my all, my one.
23.
O Life, why dost thou close me up in death?
O Health, why make me inhabit heaviness?-
I ask, yet know: the sum of this distress,
Pang-haunted body, sore-dismayed mind,
Is but the egg that rounds the winged faith;
When that its path into the air shall find,
My heart will follow, high above cold, rain, and wind.
24.
I can no more than lift my weary eyes;
Therefore I lift my weary eyes-no more.
But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before
’Tis well awake, knocks where the conscience lies;
Conscience runs quick to the spirit’s hidden door:
Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries
Up to the Father’s listening ears arise.
25.
Not in my fancy now I search to find thee;
Not in its loftiest forms would shape or bind thee;
I cry to one whom I can never know,
Filling me with an infinite overflow;
Not to a shape that dwells within my heart,
Clothed in perfections love and truth assigned thee,
But to the God thou knowest that thou art.
26.
Not, Lord, because I have done well or ill;
Not that my mind looks up to thee clear-eyed;
Not that it struggles in fast cerements tied;
Not that I need thee daily sorer still;
Not that I wretched, wander from thy will;
Not now for any cause to thee I cry,
But this, that thou art thou, and here am I.
27.
Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door.
I from my window looked: the thing I saw,
The shape uncouth, I had not seen before.
I was disturbed-with fear, in sooth, not awe;
Whereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse
My will to seek thee-only to fear the more:
Alas! I could not find thee in the house.
28.
I was like Peter when he began to sink.
To thee a new prayer therefore I have got–
That, when Death comes in earnest to my door,
Thou wouldst thyself go, when the latch doth clink,
And lead him to my room, up to my cot;
Then hold thy child’s hand, hold and leave him not,
Till Death has done with him for evermore.
29.
Till Death has done with him?-Ah, leave me then!
And Death has done with me, oh, nevermore!
He comes-and goes-to leave me in thy arms,
Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before!
To lay thy child, naked, new-born again
Of mother earth, crept free through many harms,
Upon thy bosom-still to the very core.
30.
Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how,
Nor think at which door I would have thee appear,
Nor put off calling till my floors be swept,
But cry, ‘Come, Lord, come any way, come now.’
Doors, windows, I throw wide; my head I bow,
And sit like some one who so long has slept
That he knows nothing till his life draw near.
31.
O Lord, I have been talking to the people;
Thought’s wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone,
And the recoil of my words’ airy ripple
My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown.
Therefore I cast myself before thee prone:
Lay cool hands on my burning brain, and press
From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.
