infinite
Rapture after
the danger,
The flight, the throne of
sovereignty,
The salt bread
of the stranger;
Twice ’neath the feet
of the worshipers,
Twice ’neath
the altar’s cope.
He spoke his name; two centuries,
Armed and threatening
either,
Turned unto him submissively,
As waiting fate
together;
He made a silence, and arbiter
He sat between
the two.
He vanished; his days in the
idleness
Of his island-prison
spending,
Mark of immense malignity,
And of a pity
unending,
Of hatred inappeasable,
Of deathless
love and true.
As on the head of the mariner,
Its weight some
billow heaping,
Falls even while the castaway,
With strained
sight far sweeping,
Scanneth the empty distances
For some
dim sail in vain;
So over his soul the memories
Billowed and gathered
ever!
How oft to tell posterity
Himself he did
endeavor,
And on the pages helplessly
Fell his
weary hand again.
How many times, when listlessly
In the long, dull
day’s declining—
Downcast those glances fulminant,
His arms on his
breast entwining—
He stood assailed by the memories
Of days
that were passed away;
He thought of the camps, the
arduous
Assaults, the
shock of forces,
The lightning-flash of the
infantry,
The billowy rush
of horses,
The thrill in his supremacy,
The eagerness
to obey.
Ah, haply in so great agony
His panting soul
had ended
Despairing, but that potently
A hand, from heaven
extended,
Into a clearer atmosphere
In mercy
lifted him.
And led him on by blossoming
Pathways of hope
ascending
To deathless fields, to happiness
All earthly dreams
transcending,
Where in the glory celestial
Earth’s
fame is dumb and dim.
Beautiful, deathless, beneficent
Faith! used to
triumphs, even
This also write exultantly:
No loftier pride
’neath heaven
Unto the shame of Calvary
Stooped
ever yet its crest.
Thou from his weary mortality
Disperse all bitter
passions:
The God that humbleth and
hearteneth,
That comforts
and that chastens,
Upon the pillow else desolate
To his pale
lips lay pressed!
