The theological poem, “The Heart of God,” was the cause of controversy. A stranger wrote, asking her to change it, for he thought it expressed too clearly “the old doctrine of the Divinity of Christ.” She answered politely, but with a strong statement of her faith, that what he called “the old Doctrine” was the inspiration of the verses: “To me, Christ is the Infinite Person, at once human and divine. God exists as impersonal Spirit, but I know Him only as a person through Christ. The historical Christ is entirely true to me, as the only way in which God could humanly be known to us. It is no more impossible for me to believe that the ‘Eternal Christ of God,’ the personal manifestation of Deity, should veil Himself for a time with the human form, than that we, in our humble personality, as sharers of the Divine Nature, should wear it as we do.” The same truth she put strongly in “Our Christ,” when she wrote:—
“In Christ I feel the Heart of God.”
Concerning this poem, the Rev. W. Garrett Horder, the English hymnologist, writes that it has been accorded a place in “Hymns Supplemental” for Congregational churches, and was sung for the first time in England, February 14, 1894, in Colby Chapel, Bradford.
In making an analytical study of Miss Larcom’s poetry, the range of her verse becomes apparent. She finds expression for her muse in almost all forms of versification: the epic, as in “An Idyl of Work;” the ballad, with its merry lines, relating some story of early New England days, or some delightful old legend; the lyric in its numerous forms,—pastoral songs that breathe of the fields and pretty farms, lyrics of nature in her peaceful moods when the wayside flower dwells securely, or in her grander moods when the mountains hide themselves in storm-clouds, or the sea moans in the deepening tempest; lyrics of grief, when, in solemn and plaintive strains, she chants the dirge of Elizabeth Whittier, or tolls the passing bell of Lincoln, or sheds a tear over the grave of Garfield; and sacred lyrics, in which she deals with the deepest emotions of the human heart, expressing its longing after immortality, and its adoration for God. The range of her verse is further enlarged by the addition of the sonnet’s “narrow plot of ground,” and the stately movement of the ode.
Her lines always have a musical flow born of intense emotion. They have a smoothness and ripple, like the flow of the summer brook, or the even modulations of the tides. At times, they possess a cadence not unlike what Mr. Arnold, speaking of Spenser, calls “fluidity,”—an effect produced by combinations of melodious sounds, as in these lines from “On the Beach:”—
“And glimmering beach, and plover’s flight,
And that long surge that rolls
Through bands of green and purple light,
Are fairer to our human sight
Because of human souls.”