Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
He is free and libertine,
Pouring of his power the wine
To every age, to every race;
Unto every race and age
He emptieth the beverage;
Unto each and unto all,
Maker and original.
The world is the ring of his spells,
And the plan of his miracles.
As he giveth to all to drink,
Thus or thus they are and think.
With one drop sheds form and feature;
With the next a special nature;
The third adds heat's indulgent spark;
The fourth gives light which eats the dark;
Into the fifth himself he flings,
And conscious Law is King of kings.
As the bee through the garden ranges,
From world to world the godhead changes;
As the sheep go feeding in the waste,
From form to form He maketh haste;
This vault which glows immense with light
Is the inn where he lodges for a night.
What recks such Traveller if the bowers
Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers
A bunch of fragrant lilies be,
Or the stars of eternity?
Alike to him the better, the worse,-
The glowing angel, the outcast corse.
Thou metest him by centuries,
And lo he passes like the breeze;
Thou seek'st in glade and galaxy,
He hides in pure transparency;
Thou askest in fountains and in fires,
He is the essence that inquires.
He is the axis of the star;
He is the sparkle of the spar;
He is the heart of every creature;
He is the meaning of each feature:
And his mind is the sky,
Than all it holds more deep, more high.'
In many forms we try
To utter God's infinity,
But the boundless hath no form,
And the Universal Friend
Doth as far transcend
An angel as a worm.
The great Idea baffles wit,
Language falters under it,
It leaves the learned in the lurch;
No art, nor power, nor toil can find
The measure of the eternal Mind,
Nor hymn, nor prayer, nor church.
The Living God. The God that made the world
Made it and stood aside to watch and wait.
Arranging a predestined plan
To save the erring soul of man-
Undying destiny-unswerving fate.
I see His hand in the path of life,
His law to doom and save,
His love divine in the hopes that shine
Beyond the sinner's grave,
His care that sendeth sun and rain,
His wisdom giving rest,
His price of sin that we may not win
The heaven of the blest.
Not near enough! Not clear enough!
O God, come nearer still!
I long for thee! Be strong for me!
Teach me to know Thy will!
The Living God. The God that makes the world,
Makes it is making it in all its worth;
His spirit speaking sure and slow
In the real universe we know,-
God living in the earth.
I feel His breath in the blowing wind,
His pulse in the swinging sea,
And the sunlit sod is the breast of God
Whose strength we feel and see.
His tenderness in the springing grass,
His beauty in the flowers,
His living love in the sun above,-
All here, and near, and ours!
Not near enough! Not clear enough!
O God, come nearer still!
I long for Thee! Be strong for me!
Teach me to know thy will!
The Living God. The God that is the world.
The world? The world is man-the work of man.
Then-dare I follow what
Then-By Thy Glory-it must be
That we are in thy plan!
That strength divine in the work we do?
That love in our mothers' eyes?
That wisdom clear in our thinking here?
That power to help us rise?
God in the daily work we've done,
In the daily path we've trod?
Stand still, my heart, for I am a part
I too of the Living God!
Ah, clear as light! As near! As bright!
O God! My God! My own!
Command thou me! I stand for thee!
And I do not stand alone!
Translated by C. H. Herford
As Catholics make of the Redeemer
A baby at the breast, so ye
Make God a dotard and a dreamer,
Verging on second infancy.
And as the Pope on Peter's throne
Calls little but his keys his own,
So to the Church ye would confine
The world-wide realm of the Divine;
Twixt Life and Doctrine set a sea,
Nowise concern yourselves to BE.
Bliss for your souls ye would receive
Not utterly and wholly LIVE.
Ye need such feebleness to brook,
A God who'll through his fingers look,
Who like yourselves, is hoary grown,
And keeps a cap for his bald crown.
Mine is another kind of God!
Mine is a storm, where thine's a lull;
Implacable where thine's a clod,
All-loving there, where thine is dull;
And He is young like Hercules,
No hoary sipper of life's lees!
His voice rang through the dazzled night
When He, within the burning wood
By Moses upon Horeb's height
As by a pygmy's pygmy stood.
In Gibeon's vale He stay'd the sun,
And wonders without end would do,
Were not the age grown sick-like you.
Nothing that's new do I demand;
For Everlasting Right I stand.
It is not for a church I cry,
It is not dogmas I defend;
Day dawn'd on both, and possibly,
Day may on both of them descend.
What's made has "finis" for its brand;
Of moth and worm it feels the flaw,
And then, by nature and by law,
Is for an embyro thrust aside.
But there is One that shall abide ;-
The Spirit, that was never born,
That in the world's fresh gladsome Morn
Was rescued when it seemed forlorn,
That built with valiant faith a road
Whereby from Flesh it climbed to God.
Now but in shreds and scraps is dealt
The Spirit we have faintly felt;
But from these scraps and from these shreds,
These headless hands and handless heads,
These torso-stumps of soul and thought,
A Man complete and whole shall grow,
And God, His glorious child shall know,
His heir, the Adam that he wrought!
In fellowship Religion has its founts;
The solitary his own God reveres :
Ascend no sacred Mounts
Our hungers or our fears.
As only for the numbers Nature's care
Is shown, and she the personal nothing heeds,
So to Divinity the spring of prayer
From brotherhood the one way upward leads. Like the sustaining air
Are both for flowers and weeds:
But he who claims in spirit to be flower
Will find them both an air that doth devour.
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