Religious Poems

The tent is struck, the home is gone before,
And tarries for you on the heavenly plain.

By every wish repressed and hope resigned,
Each cross accepted and each sorrow borne,
She dead yet speaketh, she doth beckon you
To tread the path her patient feet have worn.

Each year that world grows richer and more dear
With the bright freight washed from life's stormy shore;
O goodly clime, how lovely is thy strand,
With those dear faces seen on earth no more!

The veil between this world and that to come
Grows tremulous and quivers with their breath;
Dimly we hear their voices, see their hands,
Inviting us to the release of death.

O Thou, in whom thy saints above, below,
Are one and undivided, grant us grace
In patience yet to bear our daily cross, —
In patience run our hourly shortening race!

And while on earth we wear the servant's form,
And while life's labors ever toilful be,
Breathe in our souls the joyful confidence
We are already kings and priests with thee.

SUMMER STUDIES

WHY shouldst thou study in the month of June
In dusky books of Greek and Hebrew lore,
When the Great Teacher of all glorious things
Passes in hourly light before thy door?

There is a brighter book unrolling now;
Fair are its leaves as is the tree of heaven,
All veined and dewed and gemmed with wondrous signs,
To which a healing mystic power is given.

A thousand voices to its study call,
From the fair hill-top, from the waterfall,
Where the bird singeth, and the yellow bee,
And the breeze talketh from the airy tree.

Now is that glorious resurrection time
When all earth's buried beauties have new birth:
Behold the yearly miracle complete, —
God hath created a new heaven and earth!

No tree that wants its joyful garments now,
No flower but hastes his bravery to don;
God bids thee to this marriage feast of joy,
Let thy soul put the wedding garment on.

All fringed with festal gold the barberry stands;
The ferns, exultant, clap their new-made wings;
The hemlock rustles broideries of fresh green,
And thousand bells of pearl the blueberry rings.

The long, weird fingers of the old white-pines
Do beckon thee into the flickering wood,
Where moving spots of light show mystic flowers,
And wavering music fills the dreamy hours.

Hast thou no time for all this wondrous show, —
No thought to spare? Wilt thou forever be
With thy last year's dry flower-stalk and dead leaves,
And no new shoot or blossom on thy tree?

See how the pines push off their last year's leaves.
And stretch beyond them with exultant bound:
The grass and flowers, with living power, o'ergrow
Their last year's remnants on the greening ground.

Wilt thou, then, all thy wintry feelings keep,
The old dead routine of thy book-writ lore,
Nor deem that God can teach, by one bright hour,
What life hath never taught to thee before?

See what vast leisure, what unbounded rest,
Lie in the bending dome of the blue sky:
Ah! breathe that life-born languor from thy breast,
And know once more a child's unreasoning joy.

Cease, cease to think, and be content to be;
Swing safe at anchor in fair Nature's bay;
Reason no more, but o'er thy quiet soul
Let God's sweet teachings ripple their soft way.

Soar with the birds, and flutter with the leaf;
Dance with the seeded grass in fringy play;
Sail with the cloud, wave with the dreaming pine,
And float with Nature all the livelong day.

Call not such hours an idle waste of time, —
Land that lies fallow gains a quiet power;
It treasures, from the brooding of God's wings,
Strength to unfold the future tree and flower.