Giant Hours with Poet Preachers Part 8

The Vision Splendid.

"If G.o.d be with you, who can be against you?" is the echo that we hear going and coming behind these great Christian lines. Indeed, behind every poem that Oxenham writes we can hear the echoes of some great scriptural word of promise, or hope or faith or courage. The Christian, as well as those who never saw the Bible or a church, will feel at home with this poet anywhere. The advantage that the Christian will have in reading him is that he will understand him better.

Turning to those who stay at home and have lost loved ones, with what sympathy and deep, tender understanding does he write in "To You Who Have Lost." You may almost see a great kindly father standing by your side, his warm hand in yours as he sings:

"I know! I know!-- The ceaseless ache, the emptiness, the woe-- The pang of loss-- The strength that sinks beneath so sore a cross.

'Heedless and careless, still the world wags on, And leaves me broken,... Oh, my son I my son!'"

"Yea--think of this!-- Yea, rather think on this!-- He died as few men get the chance to die-- Fighting to save a world's morality.

He died the n.o.blest death a man may die, Fighting for G.o.d, and Right, and Liberty-- And such a death is Immortality."

All's Well.

If those who have lost loved ones "Over There" cannot be buoyed by that, I know not what will buoy them, what will comfort.

Oxenham too gives us a picture of a battlefield where birds sing and roses bloom, just as do Service and several other poets who have been in the midst of the conflict. We have become familiar with this picture, but no writer yet has caught its full, eternal meaning and pressed it down into three lines for the world as has this man; in "Here, There, and Everywhere":

"Man proposes--G.o.d disposes; Yet our hope in Him reposes Who in war-time still makes roses."

The Fiery Cross.

But this poet in his interpretation of war does not forget peace; does not forget that it is coming; does not forget that the world is hungry for it; does not forget that it is the duty of the poets and the thinking men and women of the world not only to get ready for it, but to lead the way to it.

PEACE AND ITS VOICE

In a remarkable poem called "Watchman! What of the Night?" we see this great heart standing sentinel on the walls of the world, watching the midnight skies red with the blaze and glow of carnage:

"Watchman! What of the night?

No light we see; Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sight Of this foul crime against humanity.

The Ways are dark--- 'I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!'

"Beyond the war-clouds and the reddened ways, I see the promise of the Coming Days!

I see His sun rise, new charged with grace, Earth's tears to dry and all her woes efface!

Christ lives! Christ loves! Christ rules!

No more shall Might, Though leagued with all the forces of the Night, Ride over Right. No more shall Wrong The world's gross agonies prolong.

Who waits His time shall surely see The triumph of His Constancy; When, without let, or bar, or stay, The coming of His Perfect Day Shall sweep the Powers of Night away; And Faith replumed for n.o.bler flight, And Hope aglow with radiance bright, And Love in loveliness bedight SHALL GREET THE MORNING LIGHT."

All's Well.

Then, as is most fair and logical, the poet tells us how we are to build again after peace comes. We must needs know that. The newspapers are full of a certain popular move--and success to it--to rebuild the destroyed cities of France and Belgium. But the rebuilding that the poet speaks of in "The Winnowing" is a deeper thing. It is a spiritual rebuilding without which there is no permanent peace in the world and no permanent safety for the material world.

"How shall we start, Lord, to build life again, Fairer and sweeter, and freed from its pain?

'Build ye in Me and your building shall be Builded for Time and Eternity.'"

All's Well.

There is the answer to the world's cry in short, sharp, succinct lines; compact as a biblical phrase; and as meaningful. Hearken it, ye world!

Only in Him can the new spiritual world be built for "Time and Eternity." And only to those who so believe and hold shall the world belong henceforth. At least so says our poet:

"To whom shall the world henceforth belong And who shall go up and possess it?"

which question he himself answers in the same verse:

"To the Men of Good Fame Who everything claim-- This world and the next--in their Master's great name--

"To these shall the world henceforth belong, And they shall go up and possess it; Overmuch, overlong, has the world suffered wrong, We are here by G.o.d's help to redress it."

The Fiery Cross.

And finally in this fight for peace he does not forget prayer, and in "The Prayer Immortal," which is introduced, as are so many of Oxenham's poems, by a phrase from the Bible, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," he admonishes those who seek peace:

"So--to your knees--And, with your heart and soul, pray G.o.d That wars may cease, And earth, by His good will, Through these rough ways, find peace!"

The Fiery Cross.

THE CROSS AND ITS VOICE

The voice of the cross of Calvary is being heard this day of war as it has never been heard before. The world is resonant with its message.

Every soldier, every nation, every home, every mother and father and child and wife who has suffered because of this war, shall henceforth understand the Christ and his cross the better. All through this writer's interpretations of the war we find the cross to the fore. To him the cross symbolizes the war. This war is the cross in a deep and abiding sense. In "Through the Valley" he says:

"And there of His radiant company, Full many a one I see, Who has won through the Valley of Shadows To the larger liberty.

Even there in the grace of the heavenly place, It is joy to meet mine own, And to know that not one but has valiantly won, By the way of the Cross, his crown."

The Vision Splendid.

Thank G.o.d for that hope! Thank G.o.d for that word!

In "The Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have been confirmed on the spot; the story of the Germans nailing men to crosses. Jim Baxter suffered this experience:

"When Jim came to, he found himself Nailed to a cross of wood, Just like the Christs you find out there On every country road.

"He wondered dully if he'd died, And so, become a Christ; 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'all men are Christs When they are crucified.'"

The Vision Splendid.

And in this homely lad's homely way of putting his cruel experience who knows but that there may be such truth as yet we cannot see in the dark chaos of war?

THE CHRIST AND HIS VOICE

It isn't a far step from the cross to the Christ of the cross, and in this man's poetry the two mingle and commingle so closely that one overlaps the other. But always these two things stand out--the cross and the Christ. And in the new volume, The Fiery Cross, one finds many pages devoted to this great thought alone.

Of the tenderness of the Christ he speaks most sympathetically, having in mind again the lads that war has taken. In "The Master's Garden"

hear him: