第8章 APRIL(1)
1.
LORD, I do choose the higher than my will.
I would be handled by thy nursing arms After thy will, not my infant alarms.
Hurt me thou wilt--but then more loving still, If more can be and less, in love's perfect zone!
My fancy shrinks from least of all thy harms, But do thy will with me--I am thine own.
2.
Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?
Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?
The thing that painful, more than should be, seems, Shall not thy sliding years with them retract--Shall fair realities not counteract?
The thing that was well dreamed of bliss and joy--Wilt thou not breathe thy life into the toy?
3.
I have had dreams of absolute delight, Beyond all waking bliss--only of grass, Flowers, wind, a peak, a limb of marble white;
They dwell with me like things half come to pass, True prophecies:--when I with thee am right, If I pray, waking, for such a joy of sight, Thou with the gold, wilt not refuse the brass.
4.
I think I shall not ever pray for such;
Thy bliss will overflood my heart and brain, And I want no unripe things back again.
Love ever fresher, lovelier than of old--How should it want its more exchanged for much?
Love will not backward sigh, but forward strain, On in the tale still telling, never told.
5.
What has been, shall not only be, but is.
The hues of dreamland, strange and sweet and tender Are but hint-shadows of full many a splendour Which the high Parent-love will yet unroll Before his child's obedient, humble soul.
Ah, me, my God! in thee lies every bliss Whose shadow men go hunting wearily amiss.
6.
Now, ere I sleep, I wonder what I shall dream.
Some sense of being, utter new, may come Into my soul while I am blind and dumb--With shapes and airs and scents which dark hours teem, Of other sort than those that haunt the day, Hinting at precious things, ages away In the long tale of us God to himself doth say.
7.
Late, in a dream, an unknown lady I saw Stand on a tomb; down she to me stepped thence.
"They tell me," quoth I, "thou art one of the dead!"
And scarce believed for gladness the yea she said;
A strange auroral bliss, an arctic awe, A new, outworldish joy awoke intense, To think I talked with one that verily was dead.
8.
Thou dost demand our love, holy Lord Christ, And batest nothing of thy modesty;--Thou know'st no other way to bliss the highest Than loving thee, the loving, perfectly.
Thou lovest perfectly--that is thy bliss:
We must love like thee, or our being miss--So, to love perfectly, love perfect Love, love thee.
9.
Here is my heart, O Christ; thou know'st I love thee.
But wretched is the thing I call my love.
O Love divine, rise up in me and move me--I follow surely when thou first dost move.
To love the perfect love, is primal, mere Necessity; and he who holds life dear, Must love thee every hope and heart above.
10.
Might I but scatter interfering things--Questions and doubts, distrusts and anxious pride, And in thy garment, as under gathering wings, Nestle obedient to thy loving side, Easy it were to love thee. But when thou Send'st me to think and labour from thee wide, Love falls to asking many a why and how.
11.
Easier it were, but poorer were the love.
Lord, I would have me love thee from the deeps--Of troubled thought, of pain, of weariness.
Through seething wastes below, billows above, My soul should rise in eager, hungering leaps;
Through thorny thicks, through sands unstable press--Out of my dream to him who slumbers not nor sleeps.
12.
I do not fear the greatness of thy command--To keep heart-open-house to brother men;
But till in thy God's love perfect I stand, My door not wide enough will open. Then Each man will be love-awful in my sight;
And, open to the eternal morning's might, Each human face will shine my window for thy light.
13.
Make me all patience and all diligence;
Patience, that thou mayst have thy time with me;
Diligence, that I waste not thy expense In sending out to bring me home to thee.
What though thy work in me transcends my sense--Too fine, too high, for me to understand--I hope entirely. On, Lord, with thy labour grand.
14.
Lest I be humbled at the last, and told That my great labour was but for my peace That not for love or truth had I been bold, But merely for a prisoned heart's release;
Careful, I humble me now before thy feet:
Whate'er I be, I cry, and will not cease--Let me not perish, though favour be not meet.
15.
For, what I seek thou knowest I must find, Or miserably die for lack of love.
I justify thee: what is in thy mind, If it be shame to me, all shame above.
Thou know'st I choose it--know'st I would not shove The hand away that stripped me for the rod--If so it pleased my Life, my love-made-angry God.
16.