Like a flower in sunshine blowing,
Cheeks, and lips, and eyes were glowing,—
I could see that he was growing
Fairer than the things of earth.
“Thou mayst take him,” said the spirit,
“Back to earth, there to inherit
All the woes of mortal birth.”
I had need of no advising;
In divinest strength arising,
All my selfishness despising,—
“Nay!” I cried; “now first I know
What it is to be a mother,
To give being to another
Living soul, for joy or woe.
“Keep him in these heavenly places,
Fold him in your pure embraces,
Teach him the divinest graces:
I return to earth again;
Not to sit and weep supinely,
But to live and love divinely.”
And the angels said, “Amen!”
O thou holy Heaven above us!
O ye angel hosts who love us!
Ye alone know how to prove us,
By the discipline of life,—
That we faint not in endeavor,
But with cheerful courage ever
Rise victorious in the strife.
RECONCILIATION.
God of the Granite and the Rose!
Soul of the Sparrow and the Bee!
The mighty tide of Being flows
Through countless channels, Lord, from thee.
It leaps to life in grass and flowers,
Through every grade of being runs,
Till from Creation’s radiant towers
Its glory flames in stars and suns.
O, ye who sit and gaze on life
With folded hands and fettered will,
Who only see, amid the strife,
The dark supremacy of ill,—
Know, that like birds, and streams, and flowers,
The life that moves you is divine!
Nor time, nor space, nor human powers,
Your Godlike spirit can confine.
Once, in a form of human mould,
Upon this earthly plane I trod;
My faith was weak, my heart was cold,—
I had no hope, I knew not God.
Deep from my being’s cup I quaffed,
With Life’s Elixir brimming o’er,
And madly sought to drain the draught,
That I might die, to live no more!
There came an angel to my side—
Not from the bowers of Paradise—
She was mine own, mine earthly bride,
With Heaven’s pure sunshine in her eyes.
She wept and prayed, she knew not why—
Her Faith, not Reason, soared above:
She talked of God and Heaven—and I—
Well—I was happy in her love.
Love was my all, my guiding star,
And like a wanderer in the night,
I hailed its radiance from afar,
Because it shone with certain light;
But all those visions, bright and high,
Which the pure-hearted only see,
Of God and Immortality,
Could not reveal their light to me.