Bitter-Sweet: A Poem

by J. G. Holland

I mark the burden well, and love it, too,
Because I love the girl and love her Lord,
And seek to vindicate His love to her
And waken hers for Him. Be this my plea:
God is almighty—all-benevolent;
And naught exists save by His loving will.
Evil, or what we reckon such, exists,
And not against His will; else the Supreme
Is subject, and we have in place of God
A phantom nothing, with a phantom name.
Therefore I care not whether He ordain
That evil live, or whether He permit;
Therefore I ask not why, in either case,
As if He meant to curse me, but I ask
What He would have this evil do for me?
What is its mission? what its ministry?
What golden fruit lies hidden in its husk?
How shall it nurse my virtue, nerve my will,
Chasten my passions, purify my love,
And make me in some goodly sense like Him
Who bore the cross of evil while He lived,
Who hung and bled upon it when He died,
And now, in glory, wears the victor's crown?

Israel.

If evil, then, have privilege and part
In the economy of holiness,
Why came the Christ to save us from its power,
And bring us restoration of the bliss
Lost in the lapse of Eden?

David.
And would you
Or Ruth 'have restoration of that bliss,
And welcome transplantation to the state
Associate with it?

Ruth.

Would I? Would I not!
Oh, I have dreamed of it a thousand times,
Sleeping and waking, since the torch of thought
Flashed into flame at Revelation's touch,
And filled my spirit with its quenchless fire.
Most envious dreams of innocence and joy
Have haunted me,—dreams that were born in sin,
Yet swathed in stainless snow. I've dreamed, and dreamed,
Of wondrous trees, crowned with perennial green,
Whose soft still shadows gleamed with golden lamps
Of pensile fruitage, or were flushed with life
Radiant and tuneful when broad flocks of birds
Swept in and out like sheets of living flame.
I've dreamed of aisles tufted with velvet grass,
And bordered with the strange intelligence
Of myriad loving eyes among the flowers,
That watched me with a curious, calm delight,
As rows of wayside cherubim may watch
A new soul, walking into Paradise.
I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun supine
Lay rocking on the ocean like a god,
And threw his weary arms far up the sky,
And with vermilion-tinted fingers toyed
With the long tresses of the evening star.
I've dreamed of dreams more beautiful than all—
Dreams that were music, perfume, vision, bliss,—
Blent and sublimed, till I have stood inwrapped
In the thick essence of an atmosphere
That made me tremble to unclose my eyes
Lest I should look on God. And I have dreamed
Of sinless men and maids, mated in heaven,
Ere yet their souls had sought for beauteous forms
To give them human sense and residence,
Moving through all this realm of choice delights
For ever and for aye; with hands and hearts
Immaculate as light; without a thought
Of evil, and without a name for fear.
Oh, when I wake from happy dreams like these,
To the old consciousness that I must die,
To the old presence of a guilty heart,
To the old fear that haunts me night and day,
Why should I not deplore the graceless fall
That makes me what I am, and shuts me out
From a condition and society
As much above a sinful maiden's dreams
As Eden blest surpasses Eden curst?

David.

So you would be another Eve, and so—
Fall with the first temptation, like herself!
God seeks for virtue; you for innocence.
You'll find it in the cradle—nowhere else—
Save in your dreams, among the grown-up babes
That dwelt in Eden—powerless, pulpy souls
That showed a dimple for each touch of sin.
God seeks for virtue, and, that it may live,
It must resist, and that which it resists
Must live. Believe me, God has other thought
Than restoration of our fallen race
To its primeval innocence and bliss.
If Jesus Christ—as we are taught—was slain
From the foundation of the world, it was
Because our evil lived in essence then—
Coeval with the great, mysterious fact.
And He was slain that we might be transformed,—
Not into Adam's sweet similitude—
But the more glorious image of Himself,
A resolution of our destiny
As high transcending Eden's life and lot
As He surpasses Eden's fallen lord.

Ruth.

You're very bold, my brother, very bold.
Did I not know you for an earnest man,
When sacred themes move you to utterance,
I'd chide you for those most irreverent words
Which make essential to the Christian scheme
That which the scheme was made to kill, or cure.