Sea’s Answer, The

I
I am the Sea, which God’s controlling hand
Holds in command.
Subservient in seeming good or ill
To work His will.
II
Or if my voice in peace or pain be heard
I speak His word;
He shapes His purpose through world-wrack or rest
As seems Him best.

III
This globe-of his vast universe a part-
I am, thou art,
An atom, each, in the eternal plan
We may not scan.

Flower O’ The World

Dawn on the fills, and in the quickening skies
In flooding splendor lies!
Primrose and daffodil, in shifting light,
Cresting the cresting height,
While all the silken water-ways beneath
Glow in a golden sheath.
The little wandering winds of morning pass
Along the grass,
And insect stir and whir
Begin, with rustling wings, and chirp and chirr,
And downy, drowsy bees
Dip in the nectar-deeps of blossom-seas.

Mid-sky a lark, a joy incarnate, trills;
The slopes with poppies burn;
There is a murmurous monotone of rills
That all the air with lulling music fills-
And in the velvet hollows of the hills
An emerald mist of fern.
Dawn on the hills-and sweet with its night shower
The world in flower!

God’s Gethsemane

The gods looked down upon the worlds of space,
The multitudinous worlds that to their will
Move circling, cycling, each, in rhythmic time,
One pulse the less a Universe in wreck,
The gods looked down-nor smiled- they do not smile,
Nor wept-they do not weep. Immutable,
Unto his Star appointed, each must hold
And answer to the One God, over all.

But lo! whence come these ceaseless agonies-
(Wherethro’, perhaps, a sweet child treble breaks,
A thread of silver in a sable pall)
From what far Sphere the cursings, dread, despair,
The strife, blasphemies ‘gainst gods and men,
And pleadings to the gods-that will not know
Its own the power to answer and to right-
The help within before the help without-
A World in travail that must travail still.

And He, the One Omnipotent, Supreme,
Throbbing His life-pulse thro’ the Universe,
Infinite wisdom, pity infinite: -
‘These puny atoms! What know they of pain? ’

Who say these walls are lonely-these-
They may not see the motley throng
That people it, as thick as bees
The scented clover beds among.

They may no hear, when footfalls cease,
And living voices, for awhile,
The speech, in many tongues and keys,
Adown each shadowy aisle.

Here are the friends that ne’er betray;
Companionship that never tires;
Here voices call from voiceless clay,
And ashes dead renew there fires.

For death can touch the flesh alone;
Immortal thought, from age to age
Lives on, and here, in varied tone,
It speaks from many a page.

Here searching History waits- the deeds
Of man and nation to rehearse:
Here clear-eyed Science walk and reads
The secrets of the universe.

Here lands and seas, from pole to pole,
The traveler spreads before the eye;
Here Faith unfolds her mystic scroll
The soul to satisfy.

Here Homer chants heroic Troy,
Here Dante strikes the harp in pain,
Here Shakespeare sounds the grief, the joy,
Of all human life and strain.

Alone and silent? Why, ‘tis rife
With form and sound! The hosts of thought
Are dwellers here; and thought is life.
Without it earth and man are not.

To war and statecraft leave the bay-
A greater crown to these belongs;
The rulers of the world are they
Who make its books and songs.

The World sweeps by! It is the end of Time!
Nay, not the end, for Time can have no end:
A cycle of the illimitable chain
That makes the circle Eternity.
It is the Day foretold: that Judgement Day!
Mountains have melted and the seas exhaled:
The Word, respoken healed the Universe,
And, perfected, the Golden Globe swings on,
See, how the great hills marshal their white peaks!
The forests lift their plumes! Fields laugh to flower!
And the vast waters of the firmament
Pour back the mighty seas, void of their dead!
‘Tis Earth reborn; Eden re-blossoming;
Life conquering Death-A new Dawn quickening Space.

I, only-I, who am that Lucifer-
‘Star of the Morning, ’ once-once Lucifer,
Of all God’s sons bright and most beautiful’-
I vanquished, lost, without His Heaven stand,
Without the Earth He framed, and named so fair;
That golden Earth into its orbit swung
Beheld beside Him in Cretion’s morn-
I, Lucifer, who knew its perfect ways,
The Serpent I, within the Paradise
By me dflowered, through me outcast and lost.
But yet I failed! O blessed that I failed!
In that He failed not in the love that gave
The Love that died to save! Joy, that I failed!
The one sole joy illuminating all
The deeps on deeps of my supremest Hell.
For this I thank Thee, Father! -that I failed.

And I-That He bow down and worship me
My Kingdom offered-I! my Kingdom, I,
The arch-usurper! -never Kingdom mine,
But His, ten-million-fold! His who redeemed,
And right of Love, All King, All Conqueror!

Now to my bondage! Bound a thousand years!
Fit Thou the sin with juster punishment!
Make it the eons-freedom nevermore.
And what the bonds? Chains, fetters, gives and gyres?
Walls that unclose not, and the weight of the worlds?
Ah, lighter these than breath of Eden-air!
Than petals of its roses softer far!
The least slight cry of Thy least creature, God,
Voicing its pain, outweighs, outbinds them all-
Bonds not the hosts of all Thy heaven could break.

Yet-grant me one last ray of my lost Star-
My Syar! my Star! my Star, Thou God, my Star! -
Before the darkness whelm and cover me.
Stand forth, my Angels and Archangels, mine,
Once glorious host, so fallen, so wronged through me-
Yet not so wronged as I by Lucifer,
Mad with the supreme crime, the lust of power.
Mercy, Jehovah! Mercy, Thou, for these!
Their pardon-mine alone the punishment!
Is their an anguish deeper? make it mine! ...
Aye! -unto this I bow, this last, supreme-
His tender smile! His Love-my Brother, Christ!