Dear places of the playtime of their youth!
Gray river, with its everlasting flood,
Libation from the mountain to the sea;
The wharves, the ships, the sailors, travelled men,
Motley in garb and polyglot in speech;
The lading landed or to be embarked—
Mysterious bales of costly merchandise
Tempting to guess what treasures might be there!—
The hallowed sabbath in that Hebrew home
Islanded in its sea of heathenism!
The sabbath seasons in the synagogue!
The reverend Scriptures of the Jewish law,
By father and by mother taught to them,
So diligently taught, day after day,
And talked of in their ears, alike when they
Sat in their house and when they walked abroad,
And when they laid them down and when they rose;
Beheld too for a sign bound on the hand,
Likewise for frontlets worn between the eyes!—
All these things like a flood-tide of the sea
Swelled on those homesick kindred hearts, while they,
Brother and sister, distant many years
From what they saw, from what much more they felt,
Seen or unseen, on that familiar shore,
Alien and heathen, yet, being native, sweet,
Lapsed into musing of the pensive past.
Half they in words, but half in silence, mused.
"Far-off by years, yet more by difference far,"
Said Paul to Rachel, "are we two withdrawn
From what we were in our Cilician home.
That dearer is to us to dream of so,
Remembering and imagining, than it were
To see; it is not what we knew it once,
With the child's heart we carried in us then.
We should not find the places that we loved;
Nay, for we should not know them—with these eyes.
They have not so much changed, but we have changed."
"Yea, doubtless, changed we are," Rachel replied;
"Yet, I at least, O Saul, not so much changed
But that it would delight me still to see
Those haunts of happy childhood—more endeared
To me, as to my brother more, I know,
From father's and mother's memory hovering there.
I loved my mother and I honored her,
But my own motherhood has taught me how
I might have better loved and honored her!"
"We must not at past failures vainly pine"—
So Paul, to Rachel sorrowing tenderly—
"But rather let them make us wiser now.
Thy lesson, sister, let it teach us both
How to be children to our Father God.
These earthly kinships all are parable
Of the enduring kinships of the skies.
We are to be to God, as children dear,
What parents would their children were to them,
So full of love with fear, of trust with heed,
And imitators of His heavenly ways."
"And is it, brother," Rachel gently asked,
"Indeed to thee so easy ever thus
To lose the earthly in the heavenly thought,
And in the symbol find the symbolized,
That only, Saul? It is not so with me.
I love the letter, and I cling to it—
A little; at least when it is so fair
As I have found it in my motherhood.
The spirit is far fairer, I suppose,
But God has made this letter 'very good'!"
Rachel spoke thus with deprecation sweet,
The while a little liquid sparkle played
Of loving humor in her eyes half turned
Toward Stephen sitting nigh them but apart;
He and Eunicé sat together there.
"Cling to thy lovely letter," Paul replied,
"'A little,' as thou sayest it, not too much—
The 'little,' as the 'not too much,' God's will
For thee, my sister; and, a paradox!
The little will be more when not too much.
It is the spirit makes the letter dear,
Or dearest, as it is itself more dear.
We better love the earthly images
Of things in heaven, when we those heavenly things
Themselves more than their loveliest shadows love."
"O brother," Rachel—suddenly her voice
Sunk to a vibrant low intensity
Of accent—said, hands clasped and eyes upturned
To him, "O brother, when such things thou sayest,
I tremble with unspeakable desire
To be what one must be to think such things.
But it is all too wonderful for me.
That inspiration of the Holy Ghost
Whereby thou knowest what else thou wouldst not know—
Perhaps that helps thee be, as well as know?"
"Nay, sister," Paul replied, "it is not so.
That inspiration is a gift to me
For knowing only, not for being. Yea,
And even my gift to know is not for me,
More than for thee, my Rachel, and for all.
It is that all may know, God makes me know.
I profit by my awful trust from God
Of farther vision in His mysteries,
Only as I a faithful steward am
To part to others what I hold from Him:
Freely I have received freely to give.
But besides this there is a grace of God
In Jesus by the Holy Spirit given,
That comes alike to all obedient souls
To help them in the life of holiness.
The habit of the heavenly mind which thou
Attributest to me in what thou askest,
This I have learned, if it indeed be mine,
By being to the Spirit teachable,
Who teaches all as fast as each will learn.
He could far faster teach us, and He would,
If only we were teachable enough.
Alas, we strangely hold the flood-gate down
Not to let all the waiting fulness in.
But what of holy willingness I have
He gives, Who worketh in me both to will
And work, for the good pleasure of His name."
"Amen!" breathed Rachel, in devout accord
With Paul's ascription of all good to Him.