Songs Unsung

by Lewis Morris

SUFFRAGES.

"Surely," said a voice, "O Lord, Thy judgments
Are dreadful and hard to understand.
Thy laws which Thou madest, they withstand Thee,
They stand against Thee and Thy command:
Thy poor, they are with us evermore;
They suffer terrible things and sore;
They are starved, they are sick, they die,
And there is none to help or heed;
They come with a great and bitter cry
They hardly dare to whisper, as they plead;
And there is none to hear them, God or man;
And it is little indeed that all our pity can."

What, and shall I be moved to tears,
As I sit in this still chamber here alone,
By the pity of it,—the childish lives that groan,
The miseries and the sorrows, the hopes and the fears
Of this wonderful legend of life, that is one and the same
Though it differ in weal and in happiness, honour and fame,—
Shall I turn, who am no more than a worm, to Thee,
From the pity of it—the want, the misery,
And with strong yearnings beat, and rebellions wild,
Seeing death written, and pain, in the face of a child;—
And yet art Thou unmoved!
Ah, Lord, if Thou sawest surely!—and yet Thou dost see;
And if Thou knewest indeed!—and yet all things are clear to Thee.

For, Lord, of a truth Thy great ones,
Who have not their wealth of their own desert,
Live ever equal lives and sure,
And are never vexed nor suffer hurt,
But through long untroubled years endure
Until they join Thee, and are in bliss;
Or, maybe, are carried away from Thee, and miss
Thy Face, which is too pure for them to see,
And are thenceforth in misery:
But, nevertheless, upon the earth
They come to neither sorrow nor dearth.
They are great, and they live out their lives, and Thou lettest them be;
Thou dost not punish them here, if they despise
Thy poor and pass them by with averted eyes.
They are strong and mighty, and never in danger to fall;
But Thou, Lord, art mighty and canst, and yet carest not at all.

But wherefore is it that such things are;—
That want and famine, and blood and war
Are everywhere, and do prevail?
And wherefore is it the same monotonous tale
Is ever told by the lips of men?
For there is hardly so hard a heart
In the breast of a man who has taken his part
In the world, and has little children around his knees,
But is filled with great love for them as Thou art for these,
And would give his life for their good, and is filled day and night
With fatherly thoughts of fear and yearning for right,
And grows sick, if evil come nigh them body or soul,
And yet is but a feeble thing, without strength or control.
But Thou art almighty for good; yet Thy plagues, they come,
Hunger and want and disease, in a terrible sum;
And the poor fathers waste, and are stricken with slow decay;
And the children fall sick, and are starving, day after day;
And the hospital wards are choked; and the fire and the flood
Vex men still, and the leaguered cities are bathed in blood.

Ay, yet not the less, O Lord,
I know Thou art just and art good indeed
This is it that doth perplex my thought,
So that I rest not content in any creed.
If I knew that Thou wert the Lord of Ill,
Then were I untouched still,
And, if I would, might worship at Thy shrine;
Or if my mind might prove no Will Divine
Inspired the dull mechanical reign of Law.
But now, while Thou art surely, and art good,
And wouldst Thy creatures have in happiness,
Alway the sword, the plague prevail no less,
Not less, not less Thy laws are based in blood.
And such deep inequalities of lot
Confuse our thought, as if Thy hand were not
All blessings, health and wealth and honours spent
On some unworthy sordid instrument;
Thy highest gift of genius flung away
On some vile thing of meanest clay,
Who fouls the ingrate lips, touched with Thy fire,
With worse than common mire:
How should I fail alone, when all things groan,
To let my weak voice take a pleading tone!
How should I speak a comfortable word
When such things are, O Lord!

This is the cry that goes up for ever
To Heaven from weak and striving souls:
But the calm Voice makes answer to them never;
The undelaying chariot onward rolls.

But another voice: O Lord of all, I bless Thee,
I bless Thee and give thanks for all.
Thou hast kept me from my childhood up,
Thou hast not let me fall
All the fair days of my youth
Thou wast beside, me and Thy truth.
I bless Thee that Thou didst withhold
The blight of fame, the curse of gold;
Because Thou hast spared my soul as yet,
Amid the wholesome toil of each swift day,
The tumult and the fret
Which carry worldly lives from Thee away.
I thank Thee for the sorrows Thou hast sent,
Being in all things content
To see in every loss a greater gain,
A joy in every pain;
The losses I have known, since still I know
Lives, hidden with Thee, are and grow.
I do not know, I cannot tell,
How it may be, yet death and pain are well:
I know that Thou art good and mild,
Though sickness take and break the helpless child;
'Twas Thou, none else, that gav'st the mother's love,
And even her anguish came from Thee above.
I am content to be that which Thou wilt:
Tho' humble be my pathway and obscure,
Yet from all stain of guilt
Keep Thou me pure.
Or if Thy evil still awhile must find
Its seat within my mind,
Be it as Thou wilt, I am not afraid.

And for the world Thy hand has made,
Thy beautiful world, so wondrous fair:
Thy mysteries of dawn, Thy unclouded days;
Thy mountains, soaring high through Thy pure air;
Thy glittering sea, sounding perpetual praise;
Thy starlit skies whence worlds unnumbered gaze;
Thy earth, which in Thy bounteous summer-tide
Is clad in flowery robes and glorified;
Thy still primeval forests, deeply stirred
By Thy great winds as by an unknown word;
Thy fair, light-winged creatures, blithe and free;
Thy dear brutes living, dying, silently:
Shall I from them no voice to praise Thee find?
Thy praise is hymned by every balmy wind
That wanders o'er a wilderness of flowers;
By every happy brute which asks not why,
But rears its brood and is content to die.
From Thee has come whatever good is ours;—
The gift of love that doth exalt the race;
The gift of childhood with its nameless grace;
The gift of age which slow through ripe decay,
Like some fair fading sunset dies away;
The gift of homes happy with honest wealth,
And fair lives flowering in unbroken health,—
All these are Thine, and the good gifts of brain,
Which to heights greater than the earth can gain,
And can our little minds project to Thee,
Through Infinite Space—across Eternity.
For these I praise Thy name; but above all
The precious gifts Thy bounteous hand lets fall,
I praise Thee for the power to love the Right,
Though Wrong awhile show fairer to the sight;
The power to sin, the dreadful power to choose
The evil portion and the good refuse;
And last, when all the power of ill is spent,
The power to seek Thy face and to repent