Lays and Legends (Second Series)

Its prayers so madly prayed,
Its wildly-fought-for right,
Its dear renounced delight,
Its passions and its pain —
All these stand gray about
My bed, like ghosts from Paradise shut out,
And I, in torment, lying here alone,
See what myself have done —
How all good things were butchered, one by one.
Not one of these but life has fouled its name,
Blotted it out with sin and loss and shame —
Until my whole life's striving is made vain.
It is too late, too late!
My house is left unto me desolate.

Yet what if here,
Through this despair too dark for dreams of fear,
Through the last bitterness of the last vain tear,
One saw a face —
Human – not turned away from man's disgrace —
A face divinely dear —
A head that had a crown of thorns to wear;
If there should come a hand
Drawing this tired head to a place of rest
On a most loving breast;
And as one felt that one could almost bear
To tell the whole long sickening trivial tale
Of how one came so utterly to fail
Of all one once knew that one might attain —
If one should feel consoling arms about,
Shutting one in, shutting the black past out —
Should feel the tears that washed one clean again,
And turn, made dumb with love and shame, to hear:
"My child, my child, do I not understand?"

THE LOST SOUL AND THE SAVED

I

Oh, rapture of infinite peace!
Many are weeping without;
From the lost crowd of these,
God, Thou hast lifted me out!

Though strong be the devil's net,
Thy grace, O God, is more strong;
I never was tempted yet
To even the edge of wrong.

The world never fired my brain,
The flesh never moved my heart —
Thou hast spared me the strife and strain,
The struggle and sorrow and smart.

The dreams that never were deeds,
The thought that shines not in word,
The struggle that never succeeds —
Thou hast saved me from these, O Lord!

I stood in my humble place
While those who aimed high fell low;
Oh the glorious gift of Thy grace
The souls of Thy saved ones know!

And yet if in heaven at last,
When all is won and is well,
Dear hands stretch out from the past,
Dear voices call me from hell —

My love whom I long for yet,
My little one gone astray! —
No; God will make me forget
In His own wise wonderful way.

Oh the infinite marvels of grace,
Oh the great atonement's cost!
Lifting my soul above
Those other souls that are lost!

Mine are the harp and throne,
Theirs is the outer night.
This, my God, Thou has done,
And all that Thou dost is right!

II

Lost as I am – degraded, foul, polluted,
Sunk in deep sloughs of failure and of sin,
Yet is my hell by God's great grace commuted,
For what I lose the others yet may win.

I – sport of flesh and fate – in all my living
Met the world's laughter and the Christian's frown,
Ever the spirit fiercely vainly striving,
Ever the flesh, triumphant, laughed it down.

Down, lower still, but ever battling vainly,
Dying to win, yet living to be lost,
My soul through depths where all its guilt showed plainly
Into the chaos of despair was tossed.