Which is the voice of Him who sits to judge?
What if they read the primal blessing thus,
'If God hath joined us, blasphemy it were 'For men to separate us by their law
'Which boasts its proud necessity to those
'Who would be one in flesh as well as heart
In flesh, the lesser thing, as now in heart,
'The greater?' What if they should read it thus And find themselves enthroned to farthest Time Among the greatest of God's messengers?
I leave you with the thought; you understand
O dearest mother, dearer to me now Than ever, in the sad discovery That what I do for duty must include A semblance of the undutiful to you,—
How must I tell you what a venturous start My life will have accomplished by the time That your dear eyes are weeping over this? For weep you will, dear mother; not for long, I feel most certain, over what is left Undone by us in scorn of all the world; But what is done will so much open out Your visions of the true reality
That you will weep, as even I do now,
To think of it; to think what blessed hope The world might reach its hands to, could it trust The voice that saith, 'I will be with thee when 'Thou comest to deep waters;' deep, like these, That from earth's labouring centre issue forth
To try all faiths, and all who honour them.
O you will weep, as I do even now,
To think how few are saved, how many drown, For lack of faith to reach their hands to that Which is our earnest of the coming time,- The ark of our deliverance, into which God shuts us, that a remnant may be left To rule his new creations. Not to us
The glory or the honour; not to us, Who have through faith been made the ministers
Of that new covenant which now begins
To dawn above the darkness of the old;
O not to us, but unto Him whose love
Is now the sea we twain have ventured on,
To seek an unknown kingdom, which doth lie,
We know, beyond all distance ever reached
By any keel which hath returned again.
We twain, my mother; you at least have known With what a glory of still lengthening days
The lengthening nights of winter saw me crowned ; You will recall the joy you did not hide
To see me, like a ship that long has swung At idle anchor, swayed by every tide,
And at the last with daybreak spreads her sails That bear her forwards, full of light and wind, Upon some holy quest;-to see me thus Loosed from my idleness, and borne away
To better things than I had touched before, Which, now I know, my soul had waited for, And found in that bright morning; this you know, And this you will remember; wherefore now It seems less hard to make you understand, Having a language which we both can speak, What else must follow.
You weep for joy to learn that so it is, I shall no more be merely bride in heart ; (I use the world's word 'merely,' for to us The world itself is merely,)—I shall not Be any more the maiden you have seen Grow up from childhood; O, a richer life,— For that must needs be richer which doth bring More chance of pain, more certainty of joy,— Will then have clothed me; I shall have put off The robe your hands have laboured, not in vain, To keep all pure and holy, and put on
A garment God hath dipped in His own light, And coloured thus with hues I see not yet, But know will satisfy me in the time
When I shall learn to rightly name them all. I shall be wed, my mother; wherefore, then, I hear you ask me, with such secrecy, And not as others, in the face of all?
>ther, tell me;—did your senses hear,
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