Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Amenophis and Other Poems (1892). I. At Ephesus

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824–1897)

OF those that saw Him, when

On common earth He trod

The life of man with men,

I only, only, breathe,

Who lean’d upon His breast, and knew that He was God.

As some strange thing that lies

Surviving all his kind,

I, ’neath the radiant skies,

Crawl baby-weak once more,

Stranded upon my hundred years of life, and blind.

And as that beast could tell

Of old incredible shapes

That peopled lake and dell;

Seas, where rocks climb the sky,

And azure ice-hills where the parch’d Sahara gapes:—

So John can testify,

Alone of living men,

By seeing of the eye

And hearing of the ear,

That very God as man breathed, died, and rose again.

It was the time foreshown;

Like a new sun o’er earth,—

Beyond all wonders known

Wonder most wonderful,—

The Well-Belovèd came, the Babe of heavenly birth.

He did the deeds, He spoke

The words past human wit:

Then gently slipp’d the yoke

Of flesh, and went to God;—

And we our treasure found, only when losing it.

Yet, though the Word withdrew,

The Paraclete remain’d;

Christ’s nearness oft we knew;

Enough to guide our life

From thought of how He spoke, and how He loved, we gain’d.

And once, ’tis said, o’er one

As though born out of time

The glory-vision shone,

Journeying Damascus-way;

Who lived in Christ, and died in some far westward clime.

Of breathing witnesses

Survives now none but I;

Who heard the Master bless

The bread and wine of life;

Saw Him and touch’d, betwixt the sepulchre and the sky.

—But though the faith of Sight

By natural law must fail,

A heavenlier higher light

Upon the soul will dawn;

The unseen outshine the seen; the faith of Faith prevail.

The things of sense are much;

But more the things of mind:

What we but see or touch

Less real, durable, true,

Than that invisible all-sustaining Life behind:

As one of Athens taught

In his own ethnic way,

That all things here were nought

But shadowy images

Of forms that in the eternal Wisdom living lay.

When these dim eyes are closed,

Children! Remember well

The word that John imposed

With his last lips on you,—

To walk henceforth by faith, and grasp the invisible.

What if no more the Lord

Before the last dread day

Be seen, yet shall His word

Its might and music keep;

Shall find fit echo in the heart of heart for aye.

As, in due transit, by

The milestone-years ye go,

Though star-like fix’d on high

The cross and He thereon

Down Time’s gray avenue further, fainter, show:—

If then the Lord delays,

O yet ye need not fear,

Faint hearts of latter days!

Time cannot touch the love

To which a thousand years but one brief hour appear.

As age on age unrolls,

If faith her light withdraw

From present-bounded souls

Who only dare believe

What they themselves have seen, or hold for Nature’s law;

Or those who will not raise,

E’en as they cry for light,

Their heads o’er life’s hot haze,

Nor care to see the stars,

Mute witnesses for God, nor dawning after night:—

Yet oft in that dark hour

When first the unseen is felt,

The Word will come in power,

The so-far-off draw nigh,

Christ’s living love the long doubt-frozen bosom melt.

—O living Love, so near

On earth, so near above,

In Thy good time appear,

Take all Thy children home,—

Who love, yet know Thee not;—who, faithful, bow, and love!

—My little children true!

Before these lips are dumb

They leave this word for you,—

Love one another! And

Again, Love one another!… Enough; He calls; I come.