They live! and still unbroken
Is that magnetic chain,
Which, in your tearful blindness,
You thought was rent in twain.
That chain of love was fashioned
By more than human art,
And every link is welded
So firm it cannot part.
They live! but O, not idly,
To fold their hands to rest,
For they who love God truly,
Are they who serve him best.
Love lightens all their labor,
And makes all duty sweet;
Their hands are never weary,
Nor way-worn are their feet.
Thus by that world of beauty,
And by that life of love,
And by the holy angels
Who listen now above,
I pledge my soul’s endeavor,
To do whate’er I can
To bless my sister woman,
And aid my brother man.
O Thou, whose love is changeless,
Both now and evermore,
Source of all conscious being!
Thy goodness I adore.
Lord, I would ever praise Thee
For all Thy love can give;
But most of all, O Father,
I thank Thee that I live.
[The two following poems were given under an influence purporting to be that of Shakspeare.]
LIFE.
“To be, or not to be,” is not “the question;”
There is no choice of Life. Ay, mark it well!—
For Death is but another name for Change.
The weary shuffle off their mortal coil,
And think to slumber in eternal night.
But, lo! the man, though dead, is living still;
Unclothed, is clothed upon, and his Mortality
Is swallowed up of Life.
“He babbles o’ green fields, then falls asleep,”
And straight awakes amid eternal verdure.
Fairer than “dreams of a Midsummer’s Night,”
The fields Elysian stretch before him.
No “Tempest” rends the ever peaceful bowers
Of asphodel, and fadeless amaranth;
No hot sirocco blows with poisonous breath;
No midnight frights him with its goblins grim,
Presaging sudden death. No Macbeth there,
Mad with ambition, plotteth damning deeds;
No Hamlet, haunted by his father’s ghost,
Stalks wildly forth intent on vengeance dire.
The curse of Cain on earth is consummate,
And knows no resurrection. Spirits learn
That spirit is immortal, and no poisoned cup,
Or dagger’s thrust, or sting of deadly asp,
Can rob it of its Godlike attribute.
This mortal garb may be as full of wounds
And bloody rents as royal Cæsar’s mantle;
Yet that which made it man or Cæsar liveth still.
Man learns, in this Valhalla of his soul,
To love, nor ever finds “Love’s Labor Lost.”
No two-faced Falstaff proffers double suit;
No Desdemona mourns Iago’s art;
And every Romeo finds his Juliet.
The stroke of Death is but a kindly frost,
Which cracks the shell, and leaves the kernel room
To germinate. What most consummate fools
This fear of death doth make us! Reason plays
The craven unto sense, and in her fear
Chooses the slow and slavish death of life,
Rather than freedom in the life of death.
“Thus Ignorance makes cowards of us all,”
And blinds us to our being’s best estate.
Madly we cling to life through nameless ills,
Pinched by necessity, and scourged by fate,
Fainting in heat and freezing in the cold,
While war, and pestilence, and sore distress,
Fever and famine, fire and flood, combine
To drive the spirit from its wreck of clay.
O, poor Humanity! How full of blots,
And stains, and pains, and miseries thou art!
Here let me be thine Antony, and plead
Thy cause against the slayers of thy peace.
Though wounded, yet thou art not dead, thou child
Of Immortality—thou heir of God!
He who would slay thee, be he brute or Brutus,
Plunges the dagger in his own vile heart.
And yet thy wounds are piteous. I could weep
That aught so fair from the Creator’s hand
Should be so marred and mangled, like a lamb
Torn by the ravening wolves. Here, let me take
Thy mantle, pierced with gaping, ghastly wounds,
From daggers clutched by ingrate hands. O Truth!
How many, in thy sacred name, have slain
Humanity, thinking they did God service!
Rome, and not Cæsar—Doctrines, and not Men.