A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul

APRIL

1     LORD, I do choose the higher than my will.     I would be handled by thy nursing arms     After thy will, not my infant alarms.     Hurt me thou wilt—but then more loving still,     If more can be and less, in love's perfect zone!     My fancy shrinks from least of all thy harms,     But do thy will with me—I am thine own.2     Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?     Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?     The thing that painful, more than should be, seems,     Shall not thy sliding years with them retract—     Shall fair realities not counteract?     The thing that was well dreamed of bliss and joy—     Wilt thou not breathe thy life into the toy?3     I have had dreams of absolute delight,     Beyond all waking bliss—only of grass,     Flowers, wind, a peak, a limb of marble white;     They dwell with me like things half come to pass,     True prophecies:—when I with thee am right,     If I pray, waking, for such a joy of sight,     Thou with the gold, wilt not refuse the brass.4     I think I shall not ever pray for such;     Thy bliss will overflood my heart and brain,     And I want no unripe things back again.     Love ever fresher, lovelier than of old—     How should it want its more exchanged for much?     Love will not backward sigh, but forward strain,     On in the tale still telling, never told.5     What has been, shall not only be, but is.     The hues of dreamland, strange and sweet and tender     Are but hint-shadows of full many a splendour     Which the high Parent-love will yet unroll     Before his child's obedient, humble soul.     Ah, me, my God! in thee lies every bliss     Whose shadow men go hunting wearily amiss.6     Now, ere I sleep, I wonder what I shall dream.     Some sense of being, utter new, may come     Into my soul while I am blind and dumb—     With shapes and airs and scents which dark hours teem,     Of other sort than those that haunt the day,     Hinting at precious things, ages away     In the long tale of us God to himself doth say.7     Late, in a dream, an unknown lady I saw     Stand on a tomb; down she to me stepped thence.     "They tell me," quoth I, "thou art one of the dead!"     And scarce believed for gladness the yea she said;     A strange auroral bliss, an arctic awe,     A new, outworldish joy awoke intense,     To think I talked with one that verily was dead.8     Thou dost demand our love, holy Lord Christ,     And batest nothing of thy modesty;—     Thou know'st no other way to bliss the highest     Than loving thee, the loving, perfectly.     Thou lovest perfectly—that is thy bliss:     We must love like thee, or our being miss—     So, to love perfectly, love perfect Love, love thee.9     Here is my heart, O Christ; thou know'st I love thee.     But wretched is the thing I call my love.     O Love divine, rise up in me and move me—     I follow surely when thou first dost move.     To love the perfect love, is primal, mere     Necessity; and he who holds life dear,     Must love thee every hope and heart above.10     Might I but scatter interfering things—     Questions and doubts, distrusts and anxious pride,     And in thy garment, as under gathering wings,     Nestle obedient to thy loving side,     Easy it were to love thee. But when thou     Send'st me to think and labour from thee wide,     Love falls to asking many a why and how.11     Easier it were, but poorer were the love.     Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps—     Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness.     Through seething wastes below, billows above,     My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps;     Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press—     Out of my dream to him who slumbers not nor sleeps.12     I do not fear the greatness of thy command—     To keep heart-open-house to brother men;     But till in thy God's love perfect I stand,     My door not wide enough will open. Then     Each man will be love-awful in my sight;     And, open to the eternal morning's might,     Each human face will shine my window for thy light.13     Make me all patience and all diligence;     Patience, that thou mayst have thy time with me;     Diligence, that I waste not thy expense     In sending out to bring me home to thee.     What though thy work in me transcends my sense—     Too fine, too high, for me to understand—     I hope entirely. On, Lord, with thy labour grand.14     Lest I be humbled at the last, and told     That my great labour was but for my peace     That not for love or truth had I been bold,     But merely for a prisoned heart's release;     Careful, I humble me now before thy feet:     Whate'er I be, I cry, and will not cease—     Let me not perish, though favour be not meet.15     For, what I seek thou knowest I must find,     Or miserably die for lack of love.     I justify thee: what is in thy mind,     If it be shame to me, all shame above.     Thou know'st I choose it—know'st I would not shove     The hand away that stripped me for the rod—     If so it pleased my Life, my love-made-angry God.16     I see a door, a multitude near by,     In creed and quarrel, sure disciples all!     Gladly they would, they say, enter the hall,     But cannot, the stone threshold is so high.     From unseen hand, full many a feeding crumb,     Slow dropping o'er the threshold high doth come:     They gather and eat, with much disputing hum.17     Still and anon, a loud clear voice doth call—     "Make your feet clean, and enter so the hall."     They hear, they stoop, they gather each a crumb.     Oh the deaf people! would they were also dumb!     Hear how they talk, and lack of Christ deplore,     Stamping with muddy feet about the door,     And will not wipe them clean to walk upon his floor!18     But see, one comes; he listens to the voice;     Careful he wipes his weary dusty feet!     The voice hath spoken—to him is left no choice;     He hurries to obey—that only is meet.     Low sinks the threshold, levelled with the ground;     The man leaps in—to liberty he's bound.     The rest go talking, walking, picking round.19     If I, thus writing, rebuke my neighbour dull,     And talk, and write, and enter not the door,     Than all the rest I wrong Christ tenfold more,     Making his gift of vision void and null.     Help me this day to be thy humble sheep,     Eating thy grass, and following, thou before;     From wolfish lies my life, O Shepherd, keep.20     God, help me, dull of heart, to trust in thee.     Thou art the father of me—not any mood     Can part me from the One, the verily Good.     When fog and failure o'er my being brood.     When life looks but a glimmering marshy clod,     No fire out flashing from the living God—     Then, then, to rest in faith were worthy victory!21     To trust is gain and growth, not mere sown seed!     Faith heaves the world round to the heavenly dawn,     In whose great light the soul doth spell and read     Itself high-born, its being derived and drawn     From the eternal self-existent fire;     Then, mazed with joy of its own heavenly breed,     Exultant-humble falls before its awful sire.22     Art thou not, Jesus, busy like to us?     Thee shall I image as one sitting still,     Ordering all things in thy potent will,     Silent, and thinking ever to thy father,     Whose thought through thee flows multitudinous?     Or shall I think of thee as journeying, rather,     Ceaseless through space, because thou everything dost fill?23     That all things thou dost fill, I well may think—     Thy power doth reach me in so many ways.     Thou who in one the universe dost bind,     Passest through all the channels of my mind;     The sun of thought, across the farthest brink     Of consciousness thou sendest me thy rays;     Nor drawest them in when lost in sleep I sink.24     So common are thy paths, thy coming seems     Only another phase oft of my me;     But nearer is my I, O Lord, to thee,     Than is my I to what itself it deems;     How better then couldst thou, O master, come,     Than from thy home across into my home,     Straight o'er the marches that I cannot see!25     Marches?—'Twixt thee and me there's no division,     Except the meeting of thy will and mine,     The loves that love, the wills that will the same.     Where thine meets mine is my life's true condition;     Yea, only there it burns with any flame.     Thy will but holds me to my life's fruition.     O God, I would—I have no mine that is not thine.26     I look for thee, and do not see thee come.—     If I could see thee, 'twere a commoner thing,     And shallower comfort would thy coming bring.     Earth, sea, and air lie round me moveless dumb,     Never a tremble, an expectant hum,     To tell the Lord of Hearts is drawing near:     Lo! in the looking eyes, the looked for Lord is here.27     I take a comfort from my very badness:     It is for lack of thee that I am bad.     How close, how infinitely closer yet     Must I come to thee, ere I can pay one debt     Which mere humanity has on me set!     "How close to thee!"—no wonder, soul, thou art glad!     Oneness with him is the eternal gladness.28     What can there be so close as making and made?     Nought twinned can be so near; thou art more nigh     To me, my God, than is this thinking I     To that I mean when I by me is said;     Thou art more near me, than is my ready will     Near to my love, though both one place do fill;—     Yet, till we are one,—Ah me! the long until!29     Then shall my heart behold thee everywhere.     The vision rises of a speechless thing,     A perfectness of bliss beyond compare!     A time when I nor breathe nor think nor move,     But I do breathe and think and feel thy love,     The soul of all the songs the saints do sing!—     And life dies out in bliss, to come again in prayer.30     In the great glow of that great love, this death     Would melt away like a fantastic cloud;     I should no more shrink from it than from the breath     That makes in the frosty air a nimbus-shroud;     Thou, Love, hast conquered death, and I aloud     Should triumph over him, with thy saintly crowd,     That where the Lamb goes ever followeth.

MAY

1     WHAT though my words glance sideways from the thing     Which I would utter in thine ear, my sire!     Truth in the inward parts thou dost desire—     Wise hunger, not a fitness fine of speech:     The little child that clamouring fails to reach     With upstretched hand the fringe of her attire,     Yet meets the mother's hand down hurrying.2     Even when their foolish words they turned on him,     He did not his disciples send away;     He knew their hearts were foolish, eyes were dim,     And therefore by his side needs must they stay.     Thou will not, Lord, send me away from thee.     When I am foolish, make thy cock crow grim;     If that is not enough, turn, Lord, and look on me.3     Another day of gloom and slanting rain!     Of closed skies, cold winds, and blight and bane!     Such not the weather, Lord, which thou art fain     To give thy chosen, sweet to heart and brain!—     Until we mourn, thou keep'st the merry tune;     Thy hand unloved its pleasure must restrain,     Nor spoil both gift and child by lavishing too soon.4     But all things shall be ours! Up, heart, and sing.     All things were made for us—we are God's heirs—     Moon, sun, and wildest comets that do trail     A crowd of small worlds for a swiftness-tail!     Up from Thy depths in me, my child-heart bring—     The child alone inherits anything:     God's little children-gods—all things are theirs!5     Thy great deliverance is a greater thing     Than purest imagination can foregrasp;     A thing beyond all conscious hungering,     Beyond all hope that makes the poet sing.     It takes the clinging world, undoes its clasp,     Floats it afar upon a mighty sea,     And leaves us quiet with love and liberty and thee.6     Through all the fog, through all earth's wintery sighs,     I scent Thy spring, I feel the eternal air,     Warm, soft, and dewy, filled with flowery eyes,     And gentle, murmuring motions everywhere—     Of life in heart, and tree, and brook, and moss;     Thy breath wakes beauty, love, and bliss, and prayer,     And strength to hang with nails upon thy cross.7     If thou hadst closed my life in seed and husk,     And cast me into soft, warm, damp, dark mould,     All unaware of light come through the dusk,     I yet should feel the split of each shelly fold,     Should feel the growing of my prisoned heart,     And dully dream of being slow unrolled,     And in some other vagueness taking part.8     And little as the world I should foreknow     Up into which I was about to rise—     Its rains, its radiance, airs, and warmth, and skies,     How it would greet me, how its wind would blow—     As little, it may be, I do know the good     Which I for years half darkling have pursued—     The second birth for which my nature cries.9     The life that knows not, patient waits, nor longs:—     I know, and would be patient, yet would long.     I can be patient for all coming songs,     But let me sing my one monotonous song.     To me the time is slow my mould among;     To quicker life I fain would spur and start     The aching growth at my dull-swelling heart.10     Christ is the pledge that I shall one day see;     That one day, still with him, I shall awake,     And know my God, at one with him and free.     O lordly essence, come to life in me;     The will-throb let me feel that doth me make;     Now have I many a mighty hope in thee,     Then shall I rest although the universe should quake.11     Haste to me, Lord, when this fool-heart of mine     Begins to gnaw itself with selfish craving;     Or, like a foul thing scarcely worth the saving,     Swoln up with wrath, desireth vengeance fine.     Haste, Lord, to help, when reason favours wrong;     Haste when thy soul, the high-born thing divine,     Is torn by passion's raving, maniac throng.12     Fair freshness of the God-breathed spirit air,     Pass through my soul, and make it strong to love;     Wither with gracious cold what demons dare     Shoot from my hell into my world above;     Let them drop down, like leaves the sun doth sear,     And flutter far into the inane and bare,     Leaving my middle-earth calm, wise, and clear.13     Even thou canst give me neither thought nor thing,     Were it the priceless pearl hid in the land,     Which, if I fix thereon a greedy gaze,     Becomes not poison that doth burn and cling;     Their own bad look my foolish eyes doth daze,     They see the gift, see not the giving hand—     From the living root the apple dead I wring.14     This versing, even the reading of the tale     That brings my heart its joy unspeakable,     Sometimes will softly, unsuspectedly hale     That heart from thee, and all its pulses quell.     Discovery's pride, joy's bliss, take aback my sail,     And sweep me from thy presence and my grace,     Because my eyes dropped from the master's face.15     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.