"Light human nature is too lightly tost
And ruffled without cause; complaining on--
Restless with rest--until, being overthrown,
It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost
Or a small wasp have crept to the innermost
Of our ripe peach; or let the wilful sun
Shine westward of our window,--straight we run
A furlong's sigh, as if the world were lost.
But what time through the heart and through the brain
God hath transfix'd us--we, so moved before,
Attain to a calm! Ay, shouldering weights of pain,
We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore;
And hear, submissive, o'er the stormy main,
God's charter'd judgments walk for evermore."
Yes; we fear it is too true that the voice of God never speaks so
articulately to man, as when it speaks in the desperate calm of a soul
to which life or death has done its worst. The same solemn thought with
which the sonnet concludes, forms the moral of her ballad entitled the
"Lay of the Brown Rosary." It is thus that the heroine of that poem
speaks--
"Then breaking into tears--'Dear God,' she cried, 'and must we see
All blissful things depart from _us_, or ere we go to THEE?
We cannot guess thee in the wood, or hear thee in the wind?
Our cedars must fall round us, ere we see the light behind?
Ay sooth, we feel too strong in weal, to need thee on that road;
But woe being come, the soul is dumb that crieth not on 'God.'"
Then it is that the despair which blackens the earth strikes clear the
face of the sky. Listen again to Miss Barrett, when her soul is cheered
by the promises of "Futurity:"--