God’s heart is satisfied, man’s eyes are upward led,
And o’er the desert wide, the dew that’s downward shed
Drawn from that flowing tide, forms flowers white and red.
XLV
RESURRECTION
Hope, last of all the angels, left the three
Who with their woman’s courage watched Christ die;
But Hope, when she had fled,
Returned to plant in them one humble flower,
The thought that in His grey sepulchral bower
They three might strew around the Dead
The alms of one adoring sympathy,
And pray a last good-bye.
They sped in silence, but the sharp-fanged doubt
Lurked in the path to mock their pungent store
Of spices, hissing, “Nay,
Ye cannot reach the Tenant of that gloom.”
But when the dawn and they retouched the tomb,
They found the stone was rolled away,
And He, their Life who died, now stood without,
Alive for evermore.
Thus when we seek our buried innocence
With bitter myrrh and grey-leaved rosemary,
And writhing doubts delay
Our steps towards the tomb of our desire,
Do Thou, O Lord, our musing eyes inspire
To see the stone is rolled away,
And find that self has thrown its grave-clothes hence
And risen to live free.
XLVI
THE ASCENSION
“Lo, I am with you alway.” Thus He spake
Girt with the zone of His disciples’ love,
And straightway, like the nascent flames that wake
Upon a placid hearth, He soars above.
Forlorn they cannot move;
Their eyes are voyaging to track the Friend
Who promised to be with them till the end.
Once, the last once, His scar-gemmed Hand He lifts,
The Hand that twined the children to His knee,
Once downward bends the pitying Eye that sifts
Our chaff and grain for all eternity:
The blue immensity
Robes its Creator in a cope of light,
A cloud receives Him from their upturned sight.
Thou “alway with us”? Do the brakes of thorn
No more entangle our tormented earth,
Do women travail less when babes are born,
Costs it less sweat for men to fight with dearth,
Is life one Eden mirth,
Moves there more laughter on the purple sea,
Or richer gold across the rippling lea?
I care not: but we know, O Friend of friends,
Thou throned above art by our weary side,
The light that upward sailed with Thee descends
To be our morn undimmed by night or tide;
And Thou, eternal Guide,
Art not content to lead us to thy goal,
But buildest heaven in the broken soul.