CREDO

How easily my neighbor chants his creed,
Kneeling beside me in the House of God.
His "I believe" he chants, and "I believe,"
With cheerful iteration and consent

Watching meantime the white, slow sunbeam move
Across the aisle, or listening to the bird

Whose free, wild song sounds through the open door.

Thou God supreme

I too, I too, believe!

But O, forgive, if this one human word,

Binding the deep and breathless thought of Thee And my own conscience with an iron band,

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Stick in my throat. I cannot say it, thus
This "I believe" that doth Thyself obscure;
This rod to smite; this barrier; this blot
On Thy most unimaginable face

And soul of majesty.

'Tis not man's faith

In Thee that he proclaims in echoed phrase,
But faith in man; faith not in Thine own Christ,
But in another man's dim thought of him.

Christ of Judea, look thou in my heart!
Do I not love thee, look to thee, in thee
Alone have faith of all the sons of men
Faith deepening with the weight and woe of years.

Pure soul and tenderest of all that came
Into this world of sorrow, hear my prayer:

Lead me, yea, lead me deeper into life,
This suffering, human life wherein thou liv'st

NON SINE DOLORE

181

And breathest still, and hold'st thy way divine.
'Tis here, O pitying Christ, where thee I seek,
Here where the strife is fiercest; where the sun
Beats down upon the highway thronged with men,
And in the raging mart. O! deeper lead
My soul into the living world of souls
Where thou dost move.

But lead me, Man Divine,

Where'er thou will'st, only that I may find
At the long journey's end thy image there,
And grow more like to it. For art not thou
The human shadow of the infinite Love
That made and fills the endless universe!

The very Word of Him, the unseen, unknown
Eternal Good that rules the summer flower
And all the worlds that people starry space!

NON SINE DOLORE

I

WHAT, then, is Life what Death?

Thus the Answerer saith;

O faithless mortal, bend thy head and listen:

Down o'er the vibrant strings,

That thrill, and moan, and mourn, and glisten,
The Master draws his bow.

A voiceless pause; then upward, see, it springs,
Free as a bird with disimprisoned wings!
In twain the chord was cloven,

While, shaken with woe,

With breaks of instant joy all interwoven,
Piercing the heart with lyric knife,

Life is the downward stroke; the upward, Life;
Death but the pause between.

II

Then spake the Questioner: If 't were only this,
Ah, who could face the abyss

That plunges steep athwart each human breath?
If the new birth of Death

Meant only more of Life as mortals know it,
What priestly balm, what song of highest poet,
Could heal one sentient soul's immitigable pain?
All, all were vain!

If, having soared pure spirit at the last,

Free from the impertinence and warp of flesh,
We find half joy, half pain, on every blast;
Are caught again in closer-woven mesh

Ah! who would care to die

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From out these fields and hills, and this familiar sky; These firm, sure hands that compass us, this dear humanity?

Again the Answerer saith:

O ye of little faith,

III

Shall, then, the spirit prove craven,

And Death's divine deliverance but give

A summer rest and haven?

By all most noble in us, by the light that streams

Into our waking dreams,

Ah, we who know what Life is, let us live!

Clearer and freer, who shall doubt?

Something of dust and darkness cast forever out;

NON SINE DOLORE

But Life, still Life, that leads to higher Life,

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Even tho' the highest be not free from the immortal strife.

The highest! Soul of man, O, be thou bold,

And to the brink of thought draw near, behold!
Where, on the earth's green sod,

Where, where in all the universe of God,

Hath strife forever ceased?

When hath not some great orb flashed into space

The terror of its doom? When hath no human face
Turned earthward in despair,

For that some horrid sin had stampt its image there?

If at our passing Life be Life increased, And we ourselves flame pure unfettered soul, Like the Eternal Power that made the whole

And lives in all He made

From shore of matter to the unknown spirit shore;

If, sire to son, and tree to limb,

Cycle on countless cycle more and more

We grow to be like Him;

If He lives on, serene and unafraid,

Through all His light, His love, His living thought,

One with the sufferer, be it soul or star;

If He escape not pain, what beings that are

Can e'er escape while Life leads on and up the unseen

way and far?

If He escape not, by whom all was wrought,

Whate'er of godlike solace still may be,

For in all worlds there is no Life without a pang, and can

be naught.

No Life without a pang! It were not Life,

If ended were the strife

Man were not man, nor God were truly God!
See from the sod

The lark thrill skyward in an arrow of song:
Even so from pain and wrong

Upsprings the exultant spirit, wild and free.
He knows not all the joy of liberty

Who never yet was crusht 'neath heavy woe.
He doth not know,

Nor can, the bliss of being brave

Who never hath faced death, nor with unquailing eye hath measured his own grave.

Courage, and pity, and divinest scorn

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Self-scorn, self-pity, and high courage of the soul;

The passion for the goal;

The strength to never yield tho' all be lost

All these are born

Of endless strife; this is the eternal cost

Of every lovely thought that through the portal
Of human minds doth pass with following light.
Blanch not, O trembling mortal!

But with extreme and terrible delight

Know thou the truth,

Nor let thy heart be heavy with false ruth.

No passing burden is our earthly sorrow That shall depart in some mysterious morrow. 'Tis His one universe where'er we are

One changeless law from sun to viewless star.

Were sorrow evil here, evil it were forever,

Beyond the scope and help of our most keen endeavor. God doth not dote,

His everlasting purpose shall not fail.

Here where our ears are weary with the wail