John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Occasional PoemsA Spiritual Manifestation
T
Its summer bloom discloses;
The wilding sweetbrier of his prayers
Is crowned with cultured roses.
The lesson that he taught her,
And binds his pearl of charity
Upon her brown-locked daughter.
His Providence plantations?
That still the careful Founder takes
A part on these occasions?
Which all of us so well know:
He rises up to speak; he jogs
The presidential elbow.
I sowed in self-denial,
For toleration had its griefs
And charity its trial.
To him must needs be given
Who heareth heresy and leaves
The heretic to Heaven!
I see in dreary vision
Dyspeptic dreamers, spiritual bores,
And prophets with a mission.
His Scripture-garbled label;
All creeds were shouted in my ears
As with the tongues of Babel.
The hope of every other;
Each martyr shook his branded fist
At the conscience of his brother!
The shriller pipe of woman,
As Gorton led his saints elect,
Who held all things in common!
And torn by thorn and thicket,
The dancing-girls of Merry Mount
Came dragging to my wicket.
Gray witch-wives, hobbling slowly;
And Antinomians, free of law,
Whose very sins were holy.
Of stripes and bondage braggarts,
Pale Churchmen, with singed rubrics snatched
From Puritanic fagots.
With tongues still sore from burning,
The Bay State’s dust from off their feet
Before my threshold spurning;
Faith’s odds and ends together;
Well might I shrink from guests with lungs
Tough as their breeches leather:
Came, rope in hand to catch them,
I took the hunted outcasts in,
I never sent to fetch them.
I gave to all who walked in,
Not clams and succotash alone,
But stronger meat of doctrine.
The bubble of perfection,
And clapped upon their inner light
The snuffers of election.
This credit I am taking;
I kept each sectary’s dish apart,
No spiritual chowder making.
Would puzzle their assorter,
The dry-shod Quaker kept the land,
The Baptist held the water.
The hat ’s no more a fixture;
And which was wet and which was dry,
Who knows in such a mixture?
To bless them all is able;
And bird and beast and creeping thing
Make clean upon His table!
The ways of faith divided,
Was I to force unwilling feet
To tread the path that I did?
Yet saw not all its splendor;
I knew enough of doubt to feel
For every conscience tender.
His Eden-trees were planted;
Because they chose amiss, should I
Deny the gift He granted?
Our common weakness feeling,
I left them with myself to God
And His all-gracious dealing!
To tare and wheat are given;
And if the ways to hell were free,
I left them free to heaven!”
Soul-freedom’s brave confessor,
So love of God and man wax strong,
Let sect and creed be lesser.
In ours one hymn are swelling;
The wandering feet, the severed paths,
All seek our Father’s dwelling.
That makes us all thy debtor,—
That holy life is more than rite,
And spirit more than letter;
Perchance the common Master,
And other sheep He hath than they
Who graze one narrow pasture!
To act as God’s avenger,
And deems, beyond his sentry-beat,
The crystal walls in danger!
Of verbal quirk and quibble,
And weeds the garden of the Lord
With Satan’s borrowed dibble.
One Master’s touch are feeling;
The branches of a common Vine
Have only leaves of healing.
We share this restful nooning;
The Quaker with the Baptist here
Believes in close communing.
Too light for thy deserving;
Thanks for thy generous faith in man,
Thy trust in God unswerving.
The words that thou hast spoken;
No forge of hell can weld again
The fetters thou hast broken.
From Roman or Genevan;
Thought-free, no ghostly tollman keeps
Henceforth the road to Heaven!