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As Islam's Prophet, when his last day drew
Nigh to its close, besought all men to say
Whom he had wronged, to whom he then should pay
A debt forgotten, or for pardon sue,
And, through the silence of his weeping friends,
A strange voice cried" "Thou owest me a debt,"
"Allah be praised!" he anwered. "Even yet
He gives me power to make to thee amends.
Oh, friend! I thank thee for thy timely word."
So runs the tale. Its lesson all may heed,
For all have sinned in thought, or word, or deed,
Or, like the Prophet, through neglect have erred.
All need forgiveness, all have debts to pay
Ere the night cometh, while it still is day.
We live by Faith; but Faith is ot the slave
Of text and legend. Reason's voice and God's,
Nature's and Duty's, never are at odds.
What asks our Father of his children, save
Justice and mercy and humility,
A reasonable service of good deeds,
Pure living, tenderness to human needs,
Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see
The Master's footprints in our daily ways?
No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife,
But the calm beauty of an ordered life
Whose very breathing is unworded praise!--
A life that stands as all true lives have stood,
Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good.
A picture memory brings to me:
I look across the years and see
Myself beside my mothers knee.
I feel her gentle hand restrain
My selfish moods, and know again
A child's blind sense of wrong and pain.
But wiser now, a man gray grown,
My childhood's needs are better known,
My mother's chastening love I own.
Gray grown, but in our Father's sight
A child still groping for the light
To read his works and ways aright.
I wait, in his good time to see
That as my mother dealt with me
So with his children dealeth He.
I bow my head beneath his hand:
That pain itself was wisely planned
I feel, and partly understand.
The joy comes in sorrow's guise,
The sweet pains of self-sacrifice,
I would not have them otherwise.
And what were life and death if sin
Knew not the dread rebuke within,
The pang of merciful discipline?
Not with thy proud despair of old,
Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould!
Pleasure and pain alike I hold.
I suffer with no vain pretence
Of triumph over flesh and sense,
Yet trust the grievous providence,
How dark soe'er it seems, may tend,
By ways I can not comprehend,
To some unguessed benignant end;
That every loss and lapse may gain
The clear-aired heights by steps of pain,
And never cross is borne in vain.
1880 |
