In those clear, piercing, piteous eyes behold
The very soul that over England flamed!
Deep, pure, intense; consuming shame and ill;
Convicting men of sin; making faith live;
And,--this the mightiest miracle of all,--
Creating God again in human hearts.
What courage of the flesh and of the spirit!
How grim of wit, when wit alone might serve!
What wisdom his to know the boundless might
Of banded effort in a world like ours!
How meek, how self-forgetful, courteous, calm!
A silent figure when men idly raged
In murderous anger; calm, too, in the storm,--
Storm of the spirit, strangely imminent,
When spiritual lightnings struck men down
And brought, by violence, the sense of sin,
And violently oped the gates of peace.
O hear that voice, which rang from dawn to night,
In church and abbey whose most ancient walls
Not for a thousand years such accents knew!
On windy hilltops; by the roaring sea;
'Mid tombs, in market-places, prisons, fields;
'Mid clamor, vile attack,--or deep-awed hush,
Wherein celestial visitants drew near
And secret ministered to troubled souls!
Hear ye, O hear! that ceaseless-pleading voice,
Which storm, nor suffering, nor age could still--
Chief prophet voice through nigh a century's span!
Now silvery as Zion's dove that mourns,
Now quelling as the Archangel's judgment trump,
And ever with a sound like that of old
Which, in the desert, shook the wandering tribes,
Or, round about storied Jerusalem,
Or by Gennesaret, or Jordan, spake
The words of life.
Let not that image fade
Ever, O God! from out the minds of men,
Of him thy messenger and stainless priest,
In a brute, sodden, and unfaithful time,
Early and late, o'er land and sea, on-driven;
In youth, in eager manhood, age extreme,--
Driven on forever, back and forth the world,
By that divine, omnipotent desire--
The hunger and the passion for men's souls!
--Richard Watson Gilder.
"WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS"
It fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.
--Arthur Hugh Clough.