Last Verses

RELEASED

ONLY a few short weeks ago,All icy bound and packed with snow,This rocky cleft, through which to-dayRuns the glad brooklet on its way;The merry brook which leaps and flows,Flashing and singing as it goes,To find and join and make a partOf the great river’s urgent heart.Could it have dreamed so sweet a thingIn all those months of prisoning?O happy brook! made glad, made free,Shall you not find at last the sea?Only a few short months ago,A harder frost, a deeper snow,Lay on my soul and held it tightAway from hope, away from light.Now God’s sweet sun has entered inAnd melted all the chains of sin,And led by his dear hand to-dayMy soul goes singing on its way,To link its little thread of goodWith the vast, over-brimming flood!O happy soul! made glad, made free,Shalt thou not find at last thy sea?

A PARADISE SONG

THE day was hot, the way was long, the feet were tired, so tired;The goal is won toward which we strove, the goal so long desired,The eyes which sought the distant hope through wavering mists of care,See it at last, oh close, so close in Paradise the Fair.The black, black night through which we groped is turned to radiant day,The doubt to certainty more glad than song or speech can say;The baffling winds which buffeted beyond our strength to bear,Blew us along the blessed way to Paradise the Fair.We doubted and we fainted, and we seemed to miss the roadAs, stumbling on and painfully, we toiled beneath our load;And the uphill left us breathless, and the tempest stripped us bare; —What matter, since they bore us up to Paradise the Fair?We who were lonely once and found the silence very sore,Companioned round by our beloved are lonely never more;The puzzles all are now explained, and the griefs which grieved us thereAre proved to be the Lord’s sure path to Paradise the Fair.

LITTLE BY LITTLE

HOW does the Spring come? With many mischances.Now the frost pricketh sore, then the sun glances;Now the rain beateth down, then the snow falleth,Nothing the cheery, brave Springtime appalleth.Bravely she smiles through the somber chill weather,Smiles on the blight and the promise together;And at the end of the long sufferingAll the world over is ruled by the Spring.How does the tide come? Not all in one rising,Daunting the land and the heavens surprising;Here a wave, there a wave, rising and falling,Billow to billow still beckoning and calling,Heaving, receding, now farther, now nigher,Now it is lower, and now it is higher;Now it seems spent and tired; then, with insistence,Gaily and strongly it comes from the distance;Till, at the end of the plunge and the roar,It is full tide, and the sea rules the shore.How does the soul grow? Not all in a minute:Now it may lose ground, and now it may win it;Now it resolves, and again the will faileth;Now it rejoiceth, and now it bewaileth;Now its hopes fructify, then they are blighted;Now it walks sunnily, now gropes benighted;Fed by discouragements, taught by disaster,So it goes forward, now slower, now faster,Till, all the pain past, and failures made whole,It is full grown, and the Lord rules the soul.

TWO YEARS

THE Old Year knew him, but the New knows not,And all our joy and welcome for the NewIs clouded by the thought, which, like a blotStains and obscures the gladness through and through.Old Year, which barely touched him as he passed,This grace abides with thee now thou art dead,Of Time’s brief vanished heirs thou wert the lastTo lay a blessing on his honored head.We saw thee greet him with mysterious smile,We did not mark how sad the smile and strange,But deemed all well, then in a little whileThe skies grew dark with swift tempestuous change.Led by thy hand he vanished from our eyes,And thou fulfilled thy date day after day,And still to grief and question and surmiseMade never answer, keeping on thy way.But still we love thee, for thou wert the lastTo see the face which we no longer see,And all the grace and glory of his pastCompletes and ends and culminates in thee.The New Year’s hands with good gifts may be full,The New Year’s heart with love and peace may brim,He cannot be to us as beautifulAs the old years which caught their best from him.

TEMPERED

WHEN stern occasion calls for war,And the trumpets shrill and peal,Forges and armories ring all dayWith the fierce clash of steel.The blades are heated in the flame,And cooled in icy flood,And beaten hard, and beaten well,To make them firm and pliable,Their edge and temper good;Then tough and sharp with discipline,They win the fight for fighting men.When God’s occasions call for men,His chosen souls he takes,In life’s hot fire he tempers them,With tears he cools and slakes;With many a heavy, grievous strokeHe beats them to an edge,And tests and tries, again, again,Till the hard will is fused, and painBecomes high privilege;Then strong, and quickened through and through,They ready are his work to do.Like an on-rushing, furious hostThe tide of need and sin,Unless the blades shall tempered be,They have no chance to win;God trusts to no untested swordWhen he goes forth to war;Only the souls that, beaten longOn pain’s great anvil, have grown strong,His chosen weapons are.Ah souls, on pain’s great anvil laid,Remember this, nor be afraid!

VIRGINIA

DEAR eyes, so full of kindness for us all,Of sympathy’s sweet cheer, of glinting fun,Of tenderness for creatures weak and small,And welcomes never failing any one: —Dear busy hands, to which all work seemed play,Defeat impossible, and taste a dower,Making the common things of every dayUnfold to beauty like an opening flower;Dear heart, whose every beat until the endWas quick and ardent with affection’s thrill;Whose ample chambers sheltered many a friend,And opened at a touch for others still, —The world seems colder than it used to beSince those sweet hands were folded on her breast,Since the eyes closed in death’s deep mysteryAnd that great loving heart was stilled to rest.But like a star she hovers through our tears,And the Eternal world, so dim, so fair,Which holds the secret of our mortal years,Nearer and friendlier seems now she is there.

LIFT UP YOUR HEARTS

Discouragement is an act of unbelief. – Henri AmielTHE spent nerve and the lowered pulse,The sluggish current of the bloodWhich feels no glad abounding flow,No bound or joyousness, but slow,And, as it were, reluctantly,Fills the dull veins, – all these may beReasons why life should not seem good.Happiness is an easy thingWhen summer airs fan summer skies,And birds in all the branches sing;Or in the budding days of spring,When life springs up renewed and fair,And joy is in the very air,And laughter readier is than sighs.But in the ebb-times of the soul,When Hope’s bright tide has turned and fled,Leaving bare sands and thirsting shells,When dried are the sweet water-wells,And leaden moments, slow with pain,Pass, and the wave turns not again,And life seems all uncomforted, —Then is the time of test, when FaithCries to the heart which inly fails:“Courage! nor let thy forces dim.Although He slay thee, trust in HimWho giveth good and tempereth ill,And never fails, and never will,To be the refuge of his saints.“To yield to grief without a blowIs to doubt God: with him for guide,The pleasant pathway, and no lessThe hot and thorn-set wilderness,Alike are roads to heaven, and He,Even where thou waitest beside the sea,Can with a word recall the tide.”