A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul Part 10

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.

4.

Master, thou workest with such common things-- Low souls, weak hearts, I mean--and hast to use, Therefore, such common means and rescuings, That hard we find it, as we sit and muse, To think thou workest in us verily: Bad sea-boats we, and manned with wretched crews-- That doubt the captain, watch the storm-spray flee.

5.

Thou art hampered in thy natural working then When beings designed on freedom's holy plan Will not be free: with thy poor, foolish men, Thou therefore hast to work just like a man.

But when, tangling thyself in their sore need, Thou hast to freedom fas.h.i.+oned them indeed, Then wilt thou grandly move, and G.o.dlike speed.

6.

Will this not then show grandest fact of all-- In thy creation victory most renowned-- That thou hast wrought thy will by slow and small, And made men like thee, though thy making bound By that which they were not, and could not be Until thou mad'st them make along with thee?-- Master, the tardiness is but in me.

7.

Hence come thy checks--because I still would run My head into the sand, nor flutter aloft Towards thy home, with thy wind under me.

'Tis because I am mean, thy ways so oft Look mean to me; my rise is low begun; But scarce thy will doth grasp me, ere I see, For my arrest and rise, its stern necessity.

8.

Like clogs upon the pinions of thy plan We hang--like captives on thy chariot-wheels, Who should climb up and ride with Death's conqueror; Therefore thy train along the world's highway steals So slow to the peace of heart-reluctant man.

What shall we do to spread the wing and soar, Nor straiten thy deliverance any more?

9.

The sole way to put flight into the wing, To preen its feathers, and to make them grow, Is to heed humbly every smallest thing With which the Christ in us has aught to do.

So will the Christ from child to manhood go, Obedient to the father Christ, and so Sweet holy change will turn all our old things to new.

10.

Creation thou dost work by faint degrees, By shade and shadow from unseen beginning; Far, far apart, in unthought mysteries Of thy own dark, unfathomable seas, Thou will'st thy will; and thence, upon the earth-- Slow travelling, his way through centuries winning-- A child at length arrives at never ending birth.

11.

Well mayst thou then work on indocile hearts By small successes, disappointments small; By nature, weather, failure, or sore fall; By shame, anxiety, bitterness, and smarts; By loneliness, by weary loss of zest:-- The rags, the husks, the swine, the hunger-quest, Drive home the wanderer to the father's breast.

12.

How suddenly some rapid turn of thought May throw the life-machine all out of gear, Clouding the windows with the steam of doubt, Filling the eyes with dust, with noise the ear!

Who knows not then where dwells the engineer, Rushes aghast into the pathless night, And wanders in a land of dreary fright.

13.

Amazed at sightless whirring of their wheels, Confounded with the recklessness and strife, Distract with fears of what may next ensue, Some break rude exit from the house of life, And plunge into a silence out of view-- Whence not a cry, no wafture once reveals What door they have broke open with the knife.

14.

Help me, my Father, in whatever dismay, Whatever terror in whatever shape, To hold the faster by thy garment's hem; When my heart sinks, oh, lift it up, I pray; Thy child should never fear though h.e.l.l should gape, Not blench though all the ills that men affray Stood round him like the Roman round Jerusalem.

15.

Too eager I must not be to understand.

How should the work the master goes about Fit the vague sketch my compa.s.ses have planned?

I am his house--for him to go in and out.

He builds me now--and if I cannot see At any time what he is doing with me, 'Tis that he makes the house for me too grand.

16.

The house is not for me--it is for him.

His royal thoughts require many a stair, Many a tower, many an outlook fair, Of which I have no thought, and need no care.

Where I am most perplexed, it may be there Thou mak'st a secret chamber, holy-dim, Where thou wilt come to help my deepest prayer.

17.

I cannot tell why this day I am ill; But I am well because it is thy will-- Which is to make me pure and right like thee.

Not yet I need escape--'tis bearable Because thou knowest. And when harder things Shall rise and gather, and overshadow me, I shall have comfort in thy strengthenings.

18.

How do I live when thou art far away?-- When I am sunk, and lost, and dead in sleep, Or in some dream with no sense in its play?

When weary-dull, or drowned in study deep?-- O Lord, I live so utterly on thee, I live when I forget thee utterly-- Not that thou thinkest of, but thinkest me.

19.

Thou far!--that word the holy truth doth blur.

Doth the great ocean from the small fish run When it sleeps fast in its low weedy bower?

Is the sun far from any smallest flower, That lives by his dear presence every hour?

Are they not one in oneness without stir-- The flower the flower because the sun the sun?