Poems

Truly, but that it is well this day for me to be with you,
Now might I say to the Lord,–‘I know thee, my God, in all fulness;
Now let thy servant depart in peace to the rest thou hast promised!’”

Faltered and ceased. And now the wild and jubilant music
Of the singing burst from the solemn profound of the silence,
Surged in triumph, and fell, and ebbed again into silence.

Then from the group of the preachers arose the greatest among them,–
He whose days were given in youth to the praise of the Savior,
He whose lips seemed touched, like the prophet’s of old, from the altar,
So that his words were flame, and burned to the hearts of his hearers,
Quickening the dead among them, reviving the cold and the doubting.
There he charged them pray, and rest not from prayer while a sinner
In the sound of their voices denied the Friend of the sinner:
“Pray till the night shall fall,–till the stars are faint in the morning,–
Yea, till the sun himself be faint in that glory and brightness,
Faint in the light which shall dawn in mercy for penitent sinners.”
Kneeling, he led them in prayer; and the quick and sobbing responses
Spake how their souls were moved with the might and the grace of the Spirit.
Then while the converts recounted how God had chastened and saved them,–
Children, whose golden locks yet shone with the lingering effulgence
Of the touches of Him who blessed little children forever;
Old men, whose yearning eyes were dimmed with the far-streaming brightness
Seen through the opening gates in the heart of the heavenly city,–
Stealthily through the harking woods the lengthening shadows
Chased the wild things to their nests, and the twilight died into darkness.

Now the four great pyres that were placed there to light the encampment,
High on platforms raised above the people, were kindled.
Flaming aloof, as it were the pillar by night in the Desert
Fell their crimson light on the lifted orbs of the preachers,
Fell on the withered brows of the old men, and Israel’s mothers,
Fell on the bloom of youth, and the earnest devotion of manhood,
Fell on the anguish and hope in the tearful eyes of the mourners.
Flaming aloof, it stirred the sleep of the luminous maples
With warm summer-dreams, and faint, luxurious languor.
Near the four great pyres the people closed in a circle,
In their midst the mourners, and, praying with them, the exhorters,
And on the skirts of the circle the unrepentant and scorners,–
Ever fewer and sadder, and drawn to the place of the mourners,
One after one, by the prayers and tears of the brethren and sisters,
And by the Spirit of God, that was mightily striving within them,
Till at the last alone stood Louis Lebeau, unconverted.

Louis Lebeau, the boatman, the trapper, the hunter, the fighter,
From the unlucky French of Gallipolis he descended,
Heir to Old World want and New World love of adventure.
Vague was the life he led, and vague and grotesque were the rumors
Through which he loomed on the people,–the hero of mythical hearsay,
Quick of hand and of heart, impatient, generous, Western,
Taking the thought of the young in secret love and in envy.
Not less the elders shook their heads and held him for outcast,
Reprobate, roving, ungodly, infidel, worse than a Papist,
With his whispered fame of lawless exploits at St. Louis,
Wild affrays and loves with the half-breeds out on the Osage,
Brawls at New Orleans, and all the towns on the rivers,
All the godless towns of the many-ruffianed rivers.
Only she who loved him the best of all, in her loving
Knew him the best of all, and other than that of the rumors.
Daily she prayed for him, with conscious and tender effusion,
That the Lord would convert him. But when her father forbade him
Unto her thought, she denied him, and likewise held him for outcast,
Turned her eyes when they met, and would not speak, though her heart broke.

Bitter and brief his logic that reasoned from wrong unto error:
“This is their praying and singing,” he said, “that makes you reject me,–
You that were kind to me once. But I think my fathers’ religion,
With a light heart in the breast and a friendly priest to absolve one,
Better than all these conversions that only bewilder and vex me,
And that have made men so hard and women fickle and cruel.
Well, then, pray for my soul, since you would not have spoken to save me,–
Yes; for I go from these saints to my brethren and sisters, the sinners.”
Spoke and went, while her faint lips fashioned unuttered entreaties,–
Went, and came again in a year at the time of the meeting,
Haggard and wan of face, and wasted with passion and sorrow.
Dead in his eyes was the careless smile of old, and its phantom
Haunted his lips in a sneer of restless, incredulous mocking.
Day by day he came to the outer skirts of the circle,
Dwelling on her, where she knelt by the white-haired exhorter, her father,
With his hollow looks, and never moved from his silence.

Now, where he stood alone, the last of impenitent sinners,
Weeping, old friends and comrades came to him out of the circle,
And with their tears besought him to hear what the Lord had done for them.
Ever he shook them off, not roughly, nor smiled at their transports.
Then the preachers spoke and painted the terrors of Judgment,
And of the bottomless pit, and the flames of hell everlasting.
Still and dark he stood, and neither listened nor heeded;
But when the fervent voice of the white-haired exhorter was lifted,
Fell his brows in a scowl of fierce and scornful rejection.
“Lord, let this soul be saved!” cried the fervent voice of the old man;
“For that the Shepherd rejoiceth more truly for one that hath wandered,
And hath been found again, than for all the others that strayed not.”

Out of the midst of the people, a woman old and decrepit,
Tremulous through the light, and tremulous into the shadow,
Wavered toward him with slow, uncertain paces of palsy,
Laid her quivering hand on his arm and brokenly prayed him:
“Louis Lebeau, I closed in death the eyes of your mother.