When I am dead unto myself, and let,
O Father, thee live on in me,
Contented to do nought but pay my debt,
And leave the house to thee,
Then shall I be thy ransomed—from the cark
Of living, from the strain for breath,
From tossing in my coffin strait and dark,
At hourly strife with death!
Have mercy! in my coffin! and awake!
A buried temple of the Lord!
Grow, Temple, grow! Heart, from thy cerements break!
Stream out, O living Sword!
When I am with thee as thou art with me,
Life will be self-forgetting power;
Love, ever conscious, buoyant, clear, and free,
Will flame in darkest hour.
Where now I sit alone, unmoving, calm,
With windows open to thy wind,
Shall I not know thee in the radiant psalm
Soaring from heart and mind?
The body of this death will melt away,
And I shall know as I am known;
Know thee my father, every hour and day,
As thou know'st me thine own!
BLIND SORROW.
"My life is drear; walking I labour sore;
The heart in me is heavy as a stone;
And of my sorrows this the icy core:
Life is so wide, and I am all alone!"
Thou did'st walk so, with heaven-born eyes down bent
Upon the earth's gold-rosy, radiant clay,
That thou had'st seen no star in all God's tent
Had not thy tears made pools first on the way.
Ah, little knowest thou the tender care
In a love-plenteous cloak around thee thrown!
Full many a dim-seen, saving mountain-stair
Toiling thou climb'st—but not one step alone!