“Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more
For olden time and holier shore;
God’s love and blessing, then and there,
Are now and here and everywhere.”
1851.
Tauler, the preacher, walked, one autumn day,
Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine,
Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;
As one who, wandering in a starless night,
Feels momently the jar of unseen waves,
And hears the thunder of an unknown sea,
Breaking along an unimagined shore.
And as he walked he prayed. Even the same
Old prayer with which, for half a score of years,
Morning, and noon, and evening, lip and heart
Had groaned: “Have pity upon me, Lord!
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.
Send me a man who can direct my steps!”
Then, as he mused, he heard along his path
A sound as of an old man’s staff among
The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up,
He saw a stranger, weak, and poor, and old.
“Peace be unto thee, father!” Tauler said,
“God give thee a good day!” The old man
raised
Slowly his calm blue eyes. “I thank thee,
son;
But all my days are good, and none are ill.”
Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again,
“God give thee happy life.” The old
man smiled,
“I never am unhappy.”
Tauler laid
His hand upon the stranger’s coarse gray sleeve
“Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.
Surely man’s days are evil, and his life
Sad as the grave it leads to.” “Nay,
my son,
Our times are in God’s hands, and all our days
Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun,
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike
Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
And that which is not, sharing not His life,
Is evil only as devoid of good.
And for the happiness of which I spake,
I find it in submission to his will,
And calm trust in the holy Trinity
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power.”
Silently wondering, for a little space,
Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one
Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought
Which long has followed, whispering through the dark
Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light
“What if God’s will consign thee hence
to Hell?”
“Then,” said the stranger, cheerily, “be
it so.
What Hell may be I know not; this I know,—
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord.
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon
His dear Humanity; the other, Love,
Clasps his Divinity. So where I go
He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him
Than golden-gated Paradise without.”
Tears sprang in Tauler’s eyes. A sudden
light,
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove
Apart the shadow wherein he had walked
Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man
Went his slow way, until his silver hair
Set like the white moon where the hills of vine
Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said
“My prayer is answered. God hath sent the
man
Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew.”
