FullReads

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.

JULY.

1.

ALAS, my tent! see through it a whirlwind sweep!
Moaning, poor Fancy’s doves are swept away.
I sit alone, a sorrow half asleep,
My consciousness the blackness all astir.
No pilgrim I, a homeless wanderer–
For how canst Thou be in the darkness deep,
Who dwellest only in the living day?

2.

It must be, somewhere in my fluttering tent,
Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent–
Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?–
My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.

3.

Not thine, my Lord, the darkness all is mine–
Save that, as mine, my darkness too is thine:
All things are thine to save or to destroy–
Destroy my darkness, rise my perfect joy;
Love primal, the live coal of every night,
Flame out, scare the ill things with radiant fright,
And fill my tent with laughing morn’s delight.