"Peace—be still!" Still,—could I but hear!
Softly,—I listen.—O fierce heart, cease!
Softly,—I breathe not,—low,—in my ear,—
Mother, Mother—I heard you!—Peace!
Enterprise, Kansas, January, 1891.
[HYMN]
(This hymn was written at the request of a Christian Science friend who proposed to set it to music. It did not represent my beliefs either then or since, but rather what I wish might be my beliefs, had I not an inexorable capacity for seeing things as they are,—a vast scheme of mutual murder, with no justice anywhere, and no God in the soul or out of it.)
I am at peace—no storm can ever touch me;
On my clear heights the sunshine only falls;
Far, far below glides the phantom voice of sorrows,
In peace-lifted light the Silence only calls.
Ah, Soul, ascend! The mountain way, up-leading,
Bears to the heights whereon the Blest have trod!
Lay down the burden;—stanch the heart's sad bleeding;
Be ye at peace, for know that Ye are God!
Not long the way, not far in a dim heaven;
In the locked Self seek ye the guiding star:
Clear shine its rays, illumining the shadow;
There, where God is, there, too, O Souls ye are.
Ye are at one, and bound in Him forever,
Ev'n as the wave is bound in the great sea;
Never to drift beyond, below Him, never!
Whole as God is, so, even so, are ye.
Philadelphia, 1892.
[YOU AND I]
(A reply to "You and I in the Golden Weather," by Dyer D. Lum.)