A Lover's Diary Part 12

Then came in further years the virgin sight Of the live sea; the sea that marches down, With sunny phalanxes and flags of foam, To match its puissance with earth's awful might.

Far off the purple mist drew into mist, As thought melts into endless thought, and round The rim of the sheer world was heard a sound, Floating through palpitating amethyst.

And through the varying waste of elements There pa.s.sed a sail, which caught the opposing wind, Triumphant, as an army in its tents

Beholds the foe it, conquering, left behind.

"And Life," I said,--"Life is but like the sea; And what shall guide us to our destiny?"

REVEALING

The prescience of dreams struck walls away From mortal fact, and mortal fact revealed, With myriad voices, potencies concealed In the dim birth-place of a coming day.

Even as a blind man's fingers wander o'er His harpstrings, led by sound to dreams of sound, Till in his soul an eloquence profound Rises above the petulance and roar

Of the great globe: as in a rush of song From feathered throats, one, in a mighty wood, 'Mid sweet interpositions moves along

The avenues of some predestined good; So I, dream-nurtured, standing by the sea, Made levy on the wonders that should be.

OVERCOMING

And G.o.d is good, I said, and Art is good, And labour hath its rich reward of sleep; And recompense will come for all who keep Dishonour's ill contagion from the blood.

And over us there curves the infinite Blue heaven as a s.h.i.+eld, and at the end We shall find One who loveth to befriend E'en those who faint for shame within His sight.

And down the awful pa.s.ses of the sky There comes the voice that circ.u.mvents the gale; That makes the avalanche to pa.s.s us by,

And saith, "I overcome" to man's "I fail."

"And peradventure now," said I, "the zest Of all existence waits on His behest."

WHITHER NOW

But man's deliverances intervene Between the soul's swift speech and G.o.d's high will; That saith to tempests of the thought, "Be still!"

And in life's lazaretto maketh clean

The leprous sense. Ah, who can find his way Among the many altars? Who can call Out perfect peace from any ritual, Or shelter find in systems of a day?

As one sees on some ancient urn, upthrown From out a tomb, records that none may read With like interpretation, and the stone

Retains its graven fealty to the dead: So, on the great palimpsest men have writ Such lines o'ercrossed that none interprets it.

ARARAT

What marvel that the soul of youth should cry, "Man builds his temples 'tween me and the face Of Him whom I would seek; I cannot trace His purpose in their shadow, nor descry

The wisdom absolute?" What marvel that, With yearning impotent, ay, impotent Beyond all measure! his full faith was spent, And for his soul there rose no Ararat?

Yet out upon the sun-drawn sensate sea Of elemental pain, there came a word As if from Him who travelled Galilee,

As fair as any Zion ever heard.

The voice of Love spoke; Love, that writes its name On Life and Death-and then my lady came.

AS LIGHT LEAPS UP

As light leaps up from star to star, so mounts Faith from one soul unto another; so The lower to the higher; till the flow Of knowledge rises from creation's founts;

Until from human love we come to know The august presence of the Love Divine; And feel the light unutterable s.h.i.+ne Upon half-lights that we were wont to show,

Absorbing them. 'Tis Love that beckons us From low desires, from restlessness and sin, To heights that else we had not reached; and thus

We find the Heaven we dared not hope to win.

How clearer seem designs immortal when Our lives are fed on Love's fine regimen