A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul Part 11

20.

"Dear presence every hour"!--what of the night, When crumpled daisies shut gold sadness in; And some do hang the head for lack of light, Sick almost unto death with absence-blight?-- Thy memory then, warm-lingering in the ground, Mourned dewy in the air, keeps their hearts sound, Till fresh with day their lapsed life begin.

21.

All things are shadows of the s.h.i.+ning true: Sun, sea, and air--close, potent, hurtless fire-- Flowers from their mother's prison--dove, and dew-- Every thing holds a slender guiding clue Back to the mighty oneness:--hearts of faith Know thee than light, than heat, endlessly nigher, Our life's life, carpenter of Nazareth.

22.

Sometimes, perhaps, the spiritual blood runs slow, And soft along the veins of will doth flow, Seeking G.o.d's arteries from which it came.

Or does the etherial, creative flame Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?-- It matters not what figure or what name, If thou art in me, and I am not to blame.

23.

In such G.o.d-silence, the soul's nest, so long As all is still, no flutter and no song, Is safe. But if my soul begin to act Without some waking to the eternal fact That my dear life is hid with Christ in G.o.d-- I think and move a creature of earth's clod, Stand on the finite, act upon the wrong.

24.

My soul this sermon hence for itself prepares:-- "Then is there nothing vile thou mayst not do, Buffeted in a tumult of low cares, And treacheries of the old man 'gainst the new."-- Lord, in my spirit let thy spirit move, Warning, that it may not have to reprove:-- In my dead moments, master, stir the prayers.

25.

Lord, let my soul o'erburdened then feel thee Thrilling through all its brain's stupidity.

If I must slumber, heedless of ill harms, Let it not be but in my Father's arms; Outside the shelter of his garment's fold, All is a waste, a terror-haunted wold.-- Lord, keep me. 'Tis thy child that cries. Behold.

26.

Some say that thou their endless love host won By deeds for them which I may not believe Thou ever didst, or ever willedst done: What matter, so they love thee? They receive Eternal more than the poor loom and wheel Of their invention ever wove and spun.-- I love thee for I must, thine all from head to heel.

27.

The love of thee will set all notions right.

Right save by love no thought can be or may; Only love's knowledge is the primal light.

Questions keep camp along love's s.h.i.+ning coast-- Challenge my love and would my entrance stay: Across the buzzing, doubting, challenging host, I rush to thee, and cling, and cry--Thou know'st.

28.

Oh, let me live in thy realities, Nor subst.i.tute my notions for thy facts, Notion with notion making leagues and pacts; They are to truth but as dream-deeds to acts, And questioned, make me doubt of everything.-- "O Lord, my G.o.d," my heart gets up and cries, "Come thy own self, and with thee my faith bring."

29.

O master, my desires to work, to know, To be aware that I do live and grow-- All restless wish for anything not thee, I yield, and on thy altar offer me.

Let me no more from out thy presence go, But keep me waiting watchful for thy will-- Even while I do it, waiting watchful still.

30.

Thou art the Lord of life, the secret thing.

Thou wilt give endless more than I could find, Even if without thee I could go and seek; For thou art one, Christ, with my deepest mind, Duty alive, self-willed, in me dost speak, And to a deeper purer being sting: I come to thee, my life, my causing kind.

31.

Nothing is alien in thy world immense-- No look of sky or earth or man or beast; "In the great hand of G.o.d I stand, and thence"

Look out on life, his endless, holy feast.

To try to feel is but to court despair, To dig for a sun within a garden-fence: Who does thy will, O G.o.d, he lives upon thy air.

AUGUST.

1.

SO shall abundant entrance me be given Into the truth, my life's inheritance.

Lo! as the sun shoots straight from out his tomb, G.o.d-floated, casting round a lordly glance Into the corners of his endless room, So, through the rent which thou, O Christ, hast riven, I enter liberty's divine expanse.

2.

It will be so--ah, so it is not now!

Who seeks thee for a little lazy peace, Then, like a man all weary of the plough, That leaves it standing in the furrow's crease, Turns from thy presence for a foolish while, Till comes again the rasp of unrest's file, From liberty is distant many a mile.

3.

Like one that stops, and drinks, and turns, and goes Into a land where never water flows, There travels on, the dry and thirsty day, Until the hot night veils the farther way, Then turns and finds again the bubbling pool-- Here would I build my house, take up my stay, Nor ever leave my Sychar's margin cool.

4.

Keep me, Lord, with thee. I call from out the dark-- Hear in thy light, of which I am a spark.

I know not what is mine and what is thine-- Of branch and stem I miss the differing mark-- But if a mere hair's-breadth me separateth, That hair's-breadth is eternal, infinite death.

For sap thy dead branch calls, O living vine!

5.

I have no choice, I must do what I can; But thou dost me, and all things else as well; Thou wilt take care thy child shall grow a man.

Rouse thee, my faith; be king; with life be one; To trust in G.o.d is action's highest kind; Who trusts in G.o.d, his heart with life doth swell; Faith opens all the windows to G.o.d's wind.

6.

O Father, thou art my eternity.

Not on the clasp Of consciousness--on thee My life depends; and I can well afford All to forget, so thou remember, Lord.

In thee I rest; in sleep thou dost me fold; In thee I labour; still in thee, grow old; And dying, shall I not in thee, my Life, be bold?

7.

In holy things may be unholy greed.

Thou giv'st a glimpse of many a lovely thing, Not to be stored for use in any mind, But only for the present spiritual need.

The holiest bread, if h.o.a.rded, soon will breed The mammon-moth, the having-pride, I find.

'Tis momently thy heart gives out heart-quickening.