WE SHALL RISE AGAIN.
We know the spirit shall not taste of death:
Earth bids her elements,
"Turn, turn again to me!"
But to the soul, unto the soul, she saith,
"Flee, alien, flee!"
And circumstance of matter what doth weigh?
Oh! not the height and depth of this to know
But reachings of that grosser element,
Which, entered in and clinging to it so,
With earthlier earthiness than dwells in clay,
Can drag the spirit down, that, looking up,
Sees, through surrounding shades of death and time,
With solemn wonder, and with new-born hope,
The dawning glories of its native clime;
And inly swell such mighty floods of love,
Unutterable longing and desire,
For that celestial, blessed home above,
The soul springs upward like the mounting fire,
Up, through the lessening shadows on its way,
While, in its raptured vision, grows more clear
The calm, the high, illimitable day
To which it draws more near and yet more near.
Draws near? Alas! its brief, its waning strength
Upward no more the fetters' weight can bear:
It falters,--pauses,--sinks; and, sunk at length,
Plucks at its chain in frenzy and despair.
Not forever fallen! Not in eternal prison!
No! hell with fire of pain
Melteth apart its chain;
Heaven doth once more constrain:
It hath arisen!
And never, never again, thus to fall low?
Ah, no!
Terror, Remorse, and Woe,
Vainly they pierced it through with many sorrows;
Hell shall regain it,--thousand times regain it;
But can detain it
Only awhile from ruthful Heaven's to-morrows.
That sin is suffering,
It knows,--it knows this thing;
And yet it courts the sting
That deeply pains it;
It knows that in the cup
The sweet is but a sup,
That Sorrow fills it up,
And who drinks drains it.
It knows; who runs may read.
But, when the fetters dazzle, heaven's far joy seems dim;
And 'tis not life but so to be inwound.
A little while, and then--behold it bleed
With madness of its throes to be unbound!
It knows. But when the sudden stress
Of passion is resistlessness,
It drags the flood that sweeps away,
For anchorage, or hold, or stay,
Or saving rock of stableness,
And there is none,--
No underlying fixedness to fasten on:
Unsounded depths; unsteadfast seas;
Wavering, yielding, bottomless depths:
But these!
Yea, sometimes seemeth gone
The Everlasting Arm we lean upon!
So blind, as well as maimed and halt and lame,
What sometimes makes it see?
Oppressed with guilt and gnawed upon of shame,
What comes upon it so,
Faster and faster stealing,
Flooding it like an air or sea
Of warm and golden feeling?
What makes it melt,
Dissolving from the earthiness that made it hard and heavy?
What makes it melt and flow,
And melt and melt and flow,--
Till light, clear-shining through its heart of dew,
Makes all things new?
Loosed from the spirit of infirmity, listen its cry.
"Was it I that longed for oblivion,
O wonderful Love! was it I,
That deep in its easeful water
My wounded soul might lie?
That over the wounds and anguish
The easeful flood might roll?
A river of loving-kindness
Has healed and hidden the whole.
Lo! in its pitiful bosom
Vanish the sins of my youth,--
Error and shame and backsliding
Lost in celestial ruth.
"O grace too great!
O excellency of my new estate!
"No more, for the friends that love me,
I shall veil my face or grieve
Because love outrunneth deserving;
I shall be as they believe.
And I shall be strong to help them,
Filled of Thy fulness with stores
Of comfort and hope and compassion.
Oh, upon all my shores,
With the waters with which Thou dost flood me,
Bid me, my Father, o'erflow!
Who can taste Thy divineness,
Nor hunger and thirst to bestow?
Send me, oh, send me!
The wanderers let me bring!
The thirsty let me show
Where the rivers of gladness spring,
And fountains of mercy flow!
How in the hills shall they sit and sing,
With valleys of peace below!"
Oh that the keys of our hearts the angels would bear in their bosoms!
For revelation fades and fades away,
Dream-like becomes, and dim, and far-withdrawn;
And evening comes to find the soul a prey,
That was caught up to visions at the dawn;
Sword of the spirit,--still it sheathes in rust,
And lips of prophecy are sealed with dust.
High lies the better country,
The land of morning and perpetual spring;
But graciously the warder
Over its mountain-border
Leans to us, beckoning,--bids us, "Come up hither!"
And though we climb with step unfixed and slow,
From visioning heights of hope we look off thither,
And we must go.
And we shall go! And we shall go!
We shall not always weep and wander so,--
Not always in vain,
By merciful pain,
Be upcast from the hell we seek again!
How shall we,
Whom the stars draw so, and the uplifting sea?
Answer, thou Secret Heart! how shall it be,
With all His infinite promising in thee?
Beloved! beloved! not cloud and fire alone
From bondage and the wilderness restore
And guide the wandering spirit to its own;
But all His elements, they go before:
Upon its way the seasons bring,
And hearten with foreshadowing
The resurrection-wonder,
What lands of death awake to sing
And germs of hope swell under;
And full and fine, and full and fine,
The day distils life's golden wine;
And night is Palace Beautiful, peace-chambered.
All things are ours; and life fills up of them
Such measure as we hold.
For ours beyond the gate,
The deep things, the untold,
We only wait.