Which thrills the universal frame,
Whereby the caverned crystal shoots,
And mounts the sap from forest roots,
Whereby the exiled wood-bird tells
When Spring makes green her native dells?
How feels the stone the pang of birth,
Which brings its sparkling prism forth?
The forest-tree the throb which gives
The life-blood to its new-born leaves?
Do bird and blossom feel, like me,
Life's many-folded mystery,-
The wonder which it is TO BE?
Or stand I severed and distinct,
From Nature's chain of life unlinked?
Allied to all, yet not the less
Prisoned in separate consciousness,
Alone o'erburdened with a sense
Of life, and cause, and consequence?
In vain to me the Sphinx propounds
The riddle of her Lights and sounds;
Back still the vaulted mystery gives
The echoed question it receives.
What sings the brook? What oracle
Is in the pine-tree's organ swell?
What may the wind's low burden be?
The meaning of the moaning sea?
The hieroglyphics of the stars?
Or clouded sunset's crimson bars?
I vainly ask, for mocks my skill
The trick of Nature's cipher still.
I turn from Nature unto men,
I ask the stylus and the pen;
What sang the bards of old?
The prophets of the Orient?
The rolls of buried Egypt, hid
In painted tomb and pyramid?
What mean Idúmea's arrowy lines,
Or dusk Elora's monstrous signs?
How speaks the primal thought of man
From the grim carvings of Copan?
Where rests the secret? Where the keys,
Of the old death-bolted mysteries?
Alas! the dead retain their trust;
Dust hath no answer from the dust.
The great enigma still unguessed,
Unanswered the eternal quest;
I gather up the scattered rays
Of wisdom in the early days,
Faint gleams and broken, like the light
Of meteors in a northern night,
Betraying to the darkling earth
The unseen sun which gave them birth;
I listen to the sibyl's chant,
The voice of priest and hierophant ;
I know what Indian Kreeshna saith,
And what of life and what of death
The demon taught to Socrates;
And what, beneath his garden-trees
Slow pacing, with a dream-like tread,
The solemn-thoughted Plato said;
Nor lack I tokens, great or small,
Of God's clear light in each and all,
While holding with more dear regard
The scroll of Hebrew seer and bard,
The starry pages promise-lit
With Christ's Evangel over-writ,
Thy miracle of life and death,
O holy one of Nazareth!
On Aztec ruins, gray and lone,
The circling serpent coils in stone,-
Type of the endless and unknown;
Whereof we seek the clue to find,
With groping fingers of the blind!
For ever sought, and never found,
We trace that serpent-symbol round
Our resting-place, our starting bound!
O thriftlessness of dream and guess!
O wisdom which is foolishness!
Why idly seek from outward things.
The answer inward silence brings;
Why stretch beyond our proper sphere
And age, for that which lies so near?
Why climb the far-off hills with pain,
A nearer view of heaven to gain?
In lowliest depths of bosky dells
The hermit Contemplation dwells.
A fountain's pine-hung slope his seat,
And lotus-twined his silent feet,
Whence, piercing heaven, with screenéd sight,
He sees at noon the stars, whose light
Shall glorify the coming night.
Here let me pause, my quest forego;
Enough for me to feel and know
That He in whom the cause and end,
The past and future, meet and blend,-
Who, girt with His immensities,
Our vast and star-hung system sees,
Small as the clustered Pleiades,-
Moves not alone in the heavenly quires,
But waves the spring-time's grassy spires,
Guards not archangel feet alone,
But deigns to guide and keep my own;
Speaks not alone the words of fate
Which worlds destroy, and worlds create,
But whispers in my spirit's ear,
In tones of love, or warning fear,
A language none beside may hear.
To Him, from wanderings long and wild,
I come, an over-wearied child,
In cool and shade his peace to find,
Like dew-fall settling on my mind.
Assured that all I know is best,
And humbly trusting for the rest,
I turn from Fancy's cloud-built scheme,
Dark creed, and mournful eastern dream
Of power, impersonal and cold,
Controlling all, itself controlled,
Maker and slave of iron laws,
Alike the subject and the cause;
From vain philosophies, that try
The sevenfold gates of mystery,
And, baffled ever, babble still,
Word-prodigal of fate and will;
From Nature, and her mockery, art,
And book and speech of men apart,
To the still witness in my heart;
With reverence waiting to behold
His Avatar of love untold,
The Eternal Beauty new and old!
66
THE METHODIST" CHARACTERIZED.
By Methodists I mean a people who profess to pursue (in whatsoever measure they have attained) holiness of heart and life, inward and outward conformity in all things to the revealed will of God; who place religion in a uniform resemblance of the great object of it, in a steady imitation of Him they worship, in all His imitable perfections, more particularly in justice, mercy, and truth, or universal love filling the heart and governing the life.
You to whom I now speak believe this love of human kind cannot spring but from the love of God. You think there can be no instance of one whose tender affection embraces every child of man (though not endeared to him either by ties of blood or by any natural or civil relation), unless that affection flow from a grateful, filial love to the common Father of all; to God, considered not only as his Father, but as "the Father of the Spirits of all flesh;" yea, as the general Parent and Friend of all the families both of heaven and earth.
This filial love you suppose to flow only from faith, which you describe as supernatural evidence (or conviction) of things not seen, so that to him who has this principle:
The things unknown to feeble sense,
Unseen by reason's glimmering ray,
With strong, commanding evidence,
Their heavenly origin display.
Faith lends its realizing light,
The clouds disperse, the shadows fly,
The Invisible appears in sight,
And God is seen by mortal eye.
|