The Amen of the Rocks.
Christian Gellert.
The Venerable Bede, with age grown blind,
till went abroad to preach the new evangel.
From town to town, village to village, journeyed
The saintly elder, with a lad for guide,
And preached the word with youthful zeal and fervor;
And once the lad led him along a vale,
All scattered o’er with mighty moss-grown bowlders.
More thoughtless than malicious quoth the urchin,
“Here, reverend father, many men have come,
And all the multitude await thy sermon.”
The blind old man stood upright at his speech,
And spake his text, explained it, thence digressed,
Exhorted, warned, reproved, and comforted,
So earnestly that tears of love and joy
Ran down his cheeks, and on his long gray beard;
Then, as was meet, he ended with “Our Father,
Thine is the kingdom, Thine the power, and Thine
The glory is forever and forever.”
Then came a thousand, thousand answering voices—
“Yea, reverend father, amen and amen.”
Then, terrified, the boy fell down repentant,
Confessing to the saint his ill behavior.
“Son,” said the holy man, “didst thou read never
That stones themselves shall cry if man is silent?
Play thou no more, my son, with things divine.
God’s word is powerful, and cuts more sharp
Than any two-edged sword. And if it be
That man toward the Lord is stony-hearted,
A human heart shall wake in stones, and witness.”