A certain father used to say: If thou hate one who speaks ill of thee, speak ill of no one; if thou hate him who calumniates thee, do not calumniate anyone; if thou hate him who injures thee or takes away what is thine, or does any thing of a like nature, do none of these things to any one. He who can observe this rule shall be saved.
All Souls' Day.
1866.
On every cross or slab, a wreath—on some,
Two, three, or more—of radiant autumn leaves,
Mingled with gold and white chrysanthemum;
Even the nameless, unmarked grave receives
Some pledge from mortal love
Unto peace-parted souls, we trust, with God above.
The choral chaunt is hushed, the Mass is said:
Noon, but already the last pilgrim gone:
Brief visits pay the living to the dead,
But once a year we meet o'er those we mourn.
I wait unwatched, alone,
To muse o'er some once loved, o'er many more unknown.
That cross of marble, with its sculptured base,
Guards the blest ashes of a friend whose form
Was half my boyhood; his arch, laughing face—
The last you'd take to front a coming storm,
Or dare what none else durst:
Read how he fell, of all the best and bravest, first!
Another pastor near him lies asleep,
Fresh wreaths, love-woven, mark the newer sod;
Each lettered white cross bids me pause to weep
Some lost companion or some man of God.
Beneath this sacred ground,
More friends I number than in all the world around.
There, side by side, far from the forfeit home
For which they vainly bled, three soldiers rest,
In sight of the round peak, whose bannered dome
Crowns the defiles wherein the fiery crest
Of a dead nation paled
Before the heights, where erst the great Virginian failed.
Westward, a little higher up the steep,
Rests a young mother—on her cross, a bar
Of golden music: since she fell asleep
The world she left has somehow seemed ajar;
Those patient, peaceful eyes,
With which she watched the world, diffused sweet harmonies.
For she was pure—pure as the snows of Yule
That hailed her birth: pure as the autumnal snow
That flecked her coffin: she was beautiful,
Heroic, gentle: none could ever know
That face and then forget:
Though vanished years ago, her smile seems living yet.
And near her, happy in that nearness, lies
The world-worn consul by his best-loved child—
The first rest of a life of sacrifice:
The native stars, that on his labors smiled
So rarely, o'er the wave
Beckoned him to the peace of home—and of the grave.
Here, too, a relic of primeval ways
And statelier manners, mingled with the grace
Of Israel: in the evening of her days,
Baptized at fourscore—strongest of her race,
Yet twice a child—that rain
Supernal leaving all those years without a stain.
And thou, young soldier, teach me how to turn
From earth to heaven, as in the solemn hour
Thy soul was turned. Ah! well for thee to learn
So soon that festal board and bridal flower
May foil the out-stretched hand:
That life's best conquest is the holy afterland.
Holding the very summit of the slope,
A pointed chapel, girt with evergreen
And frailer summer foliage—still as hope—
Watches the east for morning's earliest sheen:
Beneath it slumbers one
For whom the tears of unextinguished grief still run.
A twelve-month mourned, yet deeper now the loss
Than when first fell the slowly sudden doom,
And on her pale breast lay the unmoving cross:
Lone tenant of that solitary tomb,
Love's daily widowed prayer
Still craves reunion in thy chambered sepulchre.
The sunset shadow of this chapel falls
Upon a classmate's grave: a rare delight
Laughed in his youth: but, one by one, the halls
Of life were darkened, till, amid the night,
A single star remained—
Bright herald of the paradise by tears regained.
High in the bending trees the north wind sings,
The shining chestnut to my feet is rolled
The shivering mountains, bare as bankrupt kings,
Sit beggared of their purple and their gold:
The naked plain below
Sighs to the clouds, impatient of its robe of snow.
Death is in all things: yet how small it seems,
God's chosen acre on this mountain-side:
A speck, a mote: while yonder cornland gleams
With hoarded plenty, stretching far and wide.
A hundred acres there
Content not one: one acre serves a thousand here.
Ah! we forget them in our changing lot—
Forget the past in present weal or woe;
But yet, perchance, more angels guard this spot
Than wander in the living fields below:
And, as I pass the gate,
The world without seems strangely void and desolate.
The Function of the Subjective in Religion. [Footnote 25]
[Footnote 25: This Paper was read before the Academia of the Catholic Religion, in London, June 11, 1867, by Very Rev. W. H. Anderdon, D.D., M.A. Oxon.]
Any one not a Catholic, but fairly acquainted with the church's past and present, if he had to define by a term her prevailing character, would use some such word as unchangeable. He might use it with admiration, as historians have done; or with vexation and anger, as controversialists do. He might regard it as a quality that raised the church above, or kept it behind the age; made it venerable and noble, or deprived it of all progressive and free spirit. But, with evil report or good report, and in whatever contrast with the communions around it, which rise and fall, are modified and melt away, he would confess the church to be unchangeable.
The Catholic accepts this statement, and completes it by adding the cause of the church's preternatural sameness. He calls it "the pillar and ground of the truth;" the perpetual home and impregnable fortress of the divine revelation. The characteristics of the one faith, he says, follow those of the one Lord, as the shadow attends the substance which projects it. The mystical spouse is immutable in faith and morality, because with her divine Lord there is "no change nor shadow of vicissitude." The passage of centuries, phases of human society, rise, progress, and dissolution of theories and religious opinions leave her where they found her; because "Jesus Christ is yesterday and to-day, and the same forever." "Tempus non occurrit Ecclesiae;" because He is "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," "who inhabiteth eternity."