And follows the One Will obediently; Whose eyes, like windows on a breezy summit, Control a lovely prospect every way; Who doth not sound God's sea with earthly plummet, And find a bottom still of worthless clay; Who heeds not how the lower gusts are working, Knowing that one sure wind blows on above, And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking, One God-built shrine of reverence and love; Who sees all stars that wheel their shining marches Around the centre fixed of Destiny, Where the encircling soul serene o'erarches The moving globe of being like a sky; Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh, And finds in Love the heart's-blood of his song; This, this is he for whom the world is waiting To sing the beatings of its mighty heart, Too long hath it been patient with the grating Of scrannel-pipes, and heard it misnamed Art. To him the smiling soul of man shall listen, Laying awhile its crown of thorns aside, And once again in every eye shall glisten Heaving and swelling with a melody Learnt of the sky, the river, and the WHERE is the true man's fatherland? Who doth not hold his soul's own free- Is it alone where freedom is, Or, governed by a boisterous whim, Drop down and rattle on the glass. One poor, heart-broken, outcast girl Faces the east-wind's searching flaws, And, as about her heart they whirl, Her tattered cloak more tightly draws. The flat brick walls look cold and bleak, Her bare feet to the sidewalk freeze; Yet dares she not a shelter seek, Though faint with hunger and disease. The sharp storm cuts her forehead bare, She lingers where a ruddy glow Streams outward through an open shutter, Adding more bitterness to woe, More loneness to desertion utter. One half the cold she had not felt Until she saw this gush of light Spread warmly forth, and seem to melt Its slow way through the deadening night. She hears a woman's voice within, Singing sweet words her childhood knew, Outside the porch before the door, Her cheek upon the cold, hard stone, She lies, no longer foul and poor, No longer dreary and alone. Next morning something heavily Against the opening door did weigh, And there, from sin and sorrow free, A woman on the threshold lay. A smile upon the wan lips told That she had found a calm release, And that, from out the want and cold, The song had borne her soul in peace. For, whom the heart of man shuts out, And one of his great charities Is Music, and it doth not scorn To close the lids upon the eyes Of the polluted and forlorn; Far was she from her childhood's home, |