John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Religious PoemsThe Cry of a Lost Soul
I
With a snake’s stillness glides the Amazon
Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,
The long, despairing moan of solitude
And darkness and the absence of all good,
So full of hopeless agony and fear,
His heart stands still and listens like his ear.
Starts, drops his oar against the gunwale’s thole,
Crosses himself, and whispers, “A lost soul!”
It is the pained soul of some infidel
Or cursëd heretic that cries from hell.
He wanders, shrieking on the midnight air
For human pity and for Christian prayer.
No prayer for him who, sinning unto death,
Burns always in the furnace of God’s wrath!”
Lending new horror to that mournful cry,
The voyager listens, making no reply.
From giant trees with snake-like creepers wound,
And the black water glides without a sound.
Of nature plastic to benign intents,
And an eternal good in Providence,
And lo! rebuking all earth’s ominous cries,
The Cross of pardon lights the tropic skies!
“Thou lovest all: Thy erring child may be
Lost to himself, but never lost to Thee!
None from that Presence which is everywhere,
Nor hell itself can hide, for Thou art there.
Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame and ill,
Thy pitying eye is on Thy creature still.
In Thy long years, life’s broken circle whole,
And change to praise the cry of a lost soul?”