Be not dismayed, be not dismayed when death
Sets its white seal upon some worshipped face.
Poor human nature for a little space
Must suffer anguish, when that last drawn breath
Leaves such long silence; but let not thy faith
Fail for a moment in God’s boundless grace.
But know, oh know, He has prepared a place
Fairer for our dear dead than worlds beneath,
Yet not beneath; for those entrancing spheres
Surround our earth as seas a barren isle.
Ours is the region of eternal fears;
Theirs is the region where God’s radiant smile
Shines outward from the centre, and gives hope
Even to those who in the shadows grope.
They are not far from us. At first though long
And lone may seem the paths that intervene,
If ever on the staff of prayer we lean
The silence will grow eloquent with song
And our weak faith with certitude wax strong.
Intense, yet tranquil; fervent, yet serene,
He must be who would contact World Unseen
And comrade with their Amaranthine throng;
Not through the tossing waves of surging grief
Come spirit-ships to port. When storms subside,
Then with their precious cargoes of relief
Into the harbour of the heart they glide.
For him who will believe and trust and wait
Death’s austere silence grows articulate.
ASCENSION
I have been down in the darkest water—
Deep, deep down where no light could pierce;
Alone with the things that are bent on slaughter,
The mindless things that are cruel and fierce.
I have fought with fear in my wave-walled prison,
And begged for the beautiful boon of death;
But out of the billows my soul has risen
To glorify God with my latest breath.
There is no potion I have not tasted
Of all the bitters in life’s large store;
And never a drop of the gall was wasted
That the lords of Karma saw fit to pour,
Though I cried as my Elder Brother before me,
‘Father in heaven, let pass this cup!’
And the only response from the still skies o’er me
Was the brew held close for my lips to sup.
Yet I have grown strong on the gall Elysian,
And a courage has come that all things dares;
And I have been given an inner vision
Of the wonderful world where my dear one fares;
And I have had word from the great Hereafter—
A marvellous message that throbs with truth,
And mournful weeping has changed to laughter,
And grief has changed into the joy of youth.
Oh! there was a time when I supped sweet potions,
And lightly uttered profound belief,
Before I went down in the swirling oceans
And fought with madness and doubt and grief.
Now I am climbing the Hills of Knowledge,
And I speak unfearing, and say ‘I know,’
Though it be not to church, or to book, or college,
But to God Himself that my debt I owe.
For the ceaseless prayer of a soul is heeded,
When the prayer asks only for light and faith;
And the faith and the light and the knowledge needed
Shall gild with glory the path to death.
Oh! heart of the world by sorrow shaken,
Hear ye the message I have to give:
The seal from the lips of the dead is taken,
And they can say to you, ‘Lo! we live.’
THE DEADLIEST SIN
There are not many sins when once we sift them.
In actions of evolving human souls
Striving to reach high goals
And falling backward into dust and mire,
Some element we find that seems to lift them
Above our condemnation—even higher
Into the realm of pity and compassion.
So beauteous a thing as love itself can fashion
A chain of sins; descending to desire,
It wanders into dangerous paths, and leads
To most unholy deeds,
And light-struck, walks in madness toward the night.
Wrong oft-times is an over-ripened right,
A rank weed grown from some neglected flower,
The lightning uncontrolled: flames meant for joy
And beauty, used to ravage and destroy.
For sins like these repentance can atone.
There is one sin alone
Which seems all unforgivable, because
It springs from no temptation and no need
And no desire, save to make sweet faith bleed,
And to defame God’s laws.
Oh! viler than the murderer or the thief
Who slays the body and who robs the purse,
Is he who strives to kill the mind’s belief
And rob it of its hope
Of life beyond this little pain-filled span.
God has no curse
Quite dark enough to punish such a man,
Who, seeing how souls grope
And suffer in this world of mighty losses,
And how hearts stagger on beneath life’s crosses,
Yet strives to rob them of their staff of faith
And make them think dark death
Ends all existence; think the worshipped child
Cold in its mother’s arms is but a clod
And has not gone to God;
That souls united by love undefiled
And holy can by death be torn asunder
To meet no more.
It must be true that under
This earth of ours there lies a Purgatory
For those who seek to rob grief of the glory
That shines through hope of life immortal. In
Sin’s lexicon this is the vilest sin—
Needless and cruel, ugly, gaunt and mean,
Without one poor excuse on which to lean,
A vandal sin, that with no hope of gain
Finds pleasure only in another’s pain.