John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Religious PoemsThe Vision of Echard
T
Sat by the wayside well,
Where Marsberg sees the bridal
Of the Sarre and the Moselle.
And tawny chestnut bloom,
The happy vale Ausonius sung
For holy Treves made room.
To keep the Christ coat well,
On minster tower and kloster cross,
The westering sunshine fell.
O’erlooked the Roman’s game,
The veil of sleep fell on him,
And his thought a dream became.
Throb with a soundless word,
And by the inward ear alone
A spirit’s voice he heard.
On air and wave and sod,
And the bending walls of sapphire
Blazed with the thought of God:
All things are in my hand;
The vast earth and the awful stars
I hold as grains of sand.
And gold are mine alone;
The gifts ye bring before me
Were evermore my own.
Your pomp of masque and show?
Have I not dawns and sunsets?
Have I not winds that blow?
Is my ear with chantings fed?
Taste I your wine of worship,
Or eat your holy bread?
Am I vain as ye are vain?
What can Eternal Fulness
From your lip-service gain?
Who serve yourselves alone;
Ye boast to me of homage
Whose gain is all your own.
For you the Psalmist’s lay:
For you the law’s stone tables,
And holy book and day.
The helps that should uplift;
Ye lose in form the spirit,
The Giver in the gift.
To fast and penance vain?
Dream ye Eternal Goodness
Has joy in mortal pain?
For your Chartreuse ever dumb,
What better is the neighbor,
Or happier the home?
As sacred as his own,
And loves, forgives, and pities,
He serveth me alone.
Each kindly word and deed;
Are ye not all my children?
Shall not the Father heed?
Is lost upon mine ear:
The child’s cry in the darkness
Shall not the Father hear?
I tread upon your creeds;
Who made ye mine avengers,
Or told ye of my needs;
I love them and ye hate;
Ye bite and tear each other,
I suffer long and wait.
To cross and scourge and thorn;
Ye seek his Syrian manger
Who in the heart is born.
Ye watch His empty grave,
Whose life alone within you
Has power to bless and save.
The idle quest forego;
Who listens to His inward voice
Alone of Him shall know.
The heart must needs recall,
Its self-surrendering freedom,
Its loss that gaineth all.
Their eagles know not me;
Seek not the Blessed Islands,
I dwell not in the sea.
The triple gods are gone,
And, deaf to all the lama’s prayers,
The Buddha slumbers on.
The smitten waters gush;
Fallen is Bethel’s ladder,
Quenched is the burning bush.
And Thummim all are dim;
The fire has left the altar,
The sign the teraphim.
The Holiest abides;
Not in the scroll’s dead letter
The eternal secret hides.
For me the hollow sky;
The far is even as the near,
The low is as the high.
Her old faiths, long outworn?
What is it to the changeless truth
That yours shall fail in turn?
Lays bare the ancient lie?
What if the dreams and legends
Of the world’s childhood die?
Within yourselves alway,
My hand that on the keys of life
For bliss or bale I lay?
I hold assize within,
With sure reward of holiness,
And dread rebuke of sin.
A presence ever near,
Through the deep silence of the flesh
I reach the inward ear.
Are in each human soul,
The still, small voice of blessing,
And Sinai’s thunder-roll.
The doom-book open thrown,
The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear,
Are with yourselves alone.”
A gold and purple sunset
Flowed down the broad Moselle;
On hills of vine and meadow lands
The peace of twilight fell.
Blew over leaf and bloom;
And, faint and far, the Angelus
Rang from Saint Matthew’s tomb.
And marvelled: “Can it be
That here, in dream and vision,
The Lord hath talked with me?”
The shrines of saintly dead,
The holy coat and nail of cross,
He left unvisited.
His burdened soul to free,
Where the foot-hills of the Eifel
Are glassed in Laachersee.
He sat, in night-long parle,
With Tauler of the Friends of God,
And Nicolas of Basle.
“Yea, brother, even thus
The Voice above all voices
Hath spoken unto us.
And flesh and sense their sign:
But the blinded eyes shall open,
And the gross ear be fine.
God’s time is always best;
The true Light shall be witnessed,
The Christ within confessed.
He shall turn and overturn,
Till the heart shall be His temple
Where all of Him shall learn.”