The Catholic World Volume I Part 76

And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth

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I cannot of that music rightly say Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones.

Oh what a heart-subduing melody!

ANGEL.

My work is done,'

My task is o er, And so I come, Taking it home, For the crown is won.

Alleluia, For evermore.

My Father gave In charge to me This child of earth E'en from its birth, To serve and save, Alleluia, And saved is he.

This child of clay To me was given, To rear and train By sorrow and pain In the narrow way, Alleluia, From earth to heaven.

SOUL.

It is a member of that family Of wondrous beings, who, ere the worlds were made, Millions of ages back, have stood around The throne of G.o.d:--he never has known sin; But through those cycles all but infinite, Has had a strong and pure celestial life, And bore to gaze on th' unveiled face of G.o.d, And drank from the eternal fount of truth, And served him with a keen ecstatic love.

Hark! he begins again.

ANGEL.

Lord, how wonderful in depth and height, But most in man, how wonderful thou art!

With what a love, what soft persuasive might, Victorious o'er the stubborn fleshly heart, Thy tale complete of saints thou dost provide, To fill the throne which angels lost through pride!

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He lay a grovelling babe upon the ground, Polluted in the blood of his first sire, With his whole essence shattered and unsound, And, coiled around his heart, a demon dire, Which was not of his nature, but had skill To bind and form his opening mind to ill.

Then was I sent from heaven to set right The balance in his soul of truth and sin, And I have waged a long relentless fight, Resolved that death-environed spirit to win, Which from its fallen state, when all was lost, Had been repurchased at so dread a cost.

Oh what a s.h.i.+fting parti-colored scene Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay, Of recklessness and penitence, has been The history of that dreary, lifelong fray!

And oh the grace, to nerve him and to lead, How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need!

O man, strange composite of heaven and earth!

Majesty dwarfed to baseness! fragrant flower Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth Cloaking corruption! weakness mastering power!

Who never art so near to crime and shame, As when thou hast achieved some deed of name;

How should ethereal natures comprehend A thing made up of spirit and of clay, Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend, Linked one to one throughout its mortal day?

More than the seraph in his height of place, The angel-guardian knows and loves the ransomed race.

SOUL.

Now know I surely that I am at length Out of the body: had I part with earth, I never could have drunk those accents in, And not have wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d the voice That was so musical; but now I am So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possessed, With such a full content, and with a sense So apprehensive and discriminant, As no temptation can intoxicate.

Nor have I even terror at the thought That I am clasped by such a saintliness.

ANGEL.

All praise to him, at whose sublime decree The last are first, the first become the last; By whom the suppliant prisoner is set free, By whom proud first-borns from their thrones are cast; Who raises Mary to be queen of heaven, While Lucifer is left, condemned and unforgiven.

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-- 3.

SOUL.

I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord, My guardian spirit, all hail!

ANGEL.

All hail, my child!

My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou?

SOUL.

I would have nothing but to speak with thee For speaking's sake. I wish to hold with thee Conscious communion; though I fain would know A maze of things, were it but meet to ask, And not a curiousness.

ANGEL.

You cannot now Cherish a wish which ought not to be wished.

SOUL.

Then I will speak. I ever had believed That on the moment when the struggling soul Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell Under the awful presence of its G.o.d, There to be judged and sent to its own place.

What lets me now from going to my Lord?

ANGEL.

Thou art not let; but with extremest speed Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge: For scarcely art thou disembodied yet.

Divide a moment, as men measure time, Into its million-million-millionth part, Yet even less than that the interval Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest Cried "Subvenite," and they fell to prayer; Nay, scarcely yet have they begun to pray.

For spirits and men by different standards mete The less and greater in the flow of time.

By sun and moon, primeval ordinances-- By stars which rise and set harmoniously-- By the recurring seasons, and the swing, This way and that, of the suspended rod Precise and punctual, men divide the hours, Equal, continuous, for their common use.

Not so with us in th' immaterial world; But intervals in their succession

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Are measured by the living thought alone, And grow or wane with its intensity.

And time is not a common property; But what is long is short, and swift is slow, And near is distant, as received and grasped By this mind and by that, and every one Is standard of his own chronology.

And memory lacks its natural resting-points, Of years, and centuries, and periods.

It is thy very energy of thought Which keeps thee from thy G.o.d.

SOUL.

Dear angel, say, Why have I now no fear at meeting him?

Along my earthly life, the thought of death And judgment was to me most terrible.

I had it aye before me, and I saw The Judge severe e'en in the crucifix.

Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled; And at this balance of my destiny, Now close upon me, I can forward look With a serenest joy.