Classic Poem

The gathering back
Of scattered flowrets to the household wreath.
Brothers and sisters from their sever'd homes
Meeting with ardent smile, to renovate
The love that sprang from cradle memories
And childhood's sports, and whose perennial stream
Still threw fresh crystals o'er the sands of life.
--Each bore some treasured picture of the past,
Some graphic incident, by mellowing time
Made beautiful, while ever and anon,
Timbrel and harp broke forth, each pause between.
Banquet and wine-cup, and the dance, gave speed
To youthful spirits, and prolong'd the joy.

* * * * *

The patriarch father, with a chasten'd heart
Partook his children's mirth, having God's fear
Ever before him. Earnestly he brought
His offerings and his prayers for every one
Of that beloved group, lest in the swell
And surging superflux of happiness
They might forget the Hand from whence it came,
Perchance, displease the Almighty.
Many a care
Had he that wealth creates. Not such as lurks
In heaps metallic, which the rust corrodes,
But wealth that fructifies within the earth
Whence cometh bread, or o'er its surface roves
In peaceful forms of quadrupedal life
That thronging round the world's first father came
To take their names, 'mid Eden's tranquil shades,
Ere sin was born.
Obedient to the yoke,
Five hundred oxen turn'd the furrow'd glebe
Where agriculture hides his buried seed
Waiting the harvest hope, while patient wrought
An equal number of that race who share
The labor of the steed, without his praise.
--Three thousand camels, with their arching necks,
Ships of the desert, knelt to do his will,
And bear his surplus wealth to distant climes,
While more than twice three thousand snowy sheep
Whitened the hills. Troops of retainers fed
These flocks and herds, and their subsistence drew
From the same lord,--so that this man of Uz
Greater than all the magnates of the east,
Dwelt in old time before us.
True he gave,
And faithfully, the hireling his reward,
Counting such justice 'mid the happier forms
Of Charity, which with a liberal hand
He to the sad and suffering poor dispensed.
Eyes was he to the blind, and to the lame
Feet, while the stranger and the traveller found
Beneath, the welcome shelter of his roof
The blessed boon of hospitality.

To him the fatherless and widow sought
For aid and counsel. Fearlessly he rose
For those who had no helper. His just mind
Brought stifled truth to light, disarm'd the wiles
Of power, and gave deliverance to the weak.
He pluck'd the victim from the oppressor's grasp,
And made the tyrant tremble.
To his words
Men listened, as to lore oracular,
And when beside the gate he took his seat
The young kept silence, and the old rose up
To do him honor. After his decree
None spake again, for as a prince he dwelt
Wearing the diadem of righteousness,
And robed in that respect which greatness wins
When leagued with goodness, and by wisdom crown'd.
The grateful prayers and blessings of the souls
Ready to perish, silently distill'd
Upon him, as he slept.
So as a tree
Whose root is by the river's brink, he grew
And flourish'd, while the dews like balm-drops hung
All night upon his branches.
Yet let none
Of woman born, presume to build his hopes
On the worn cliff of brief prosperity,
Or from the present promise, predicate
The future joy. The exulting bird that sings
Mid the green curtains of its leafy nest
His tuneful trust untroubled there to live,
And there to die, may meet the archer's shaft
When next it spreads the wing.
The tempest folds
O'er the smooth forehead of the summer noon
Its undiscover'd purpose, to emerge
Resistless from its armory, and whelm
In floods of ruin, ere the day decline.

* * * * *

Lightning and sword!
Swift messengers, and sharp,
Reapers that leave no gleanings. In their path
Silence and desolation fiercely stalk.
--O'er trampled hills, and on the blood-stain'd plains
There is no low of kine, or bleat of flocks,
The fields are rifled, and the shepherds slain.

The Man of Uz, who stood but yestermorn
Above all compeers,--clothed with wealth and power,
To day is poorer than his humblest hind.
A whirlwind from the desert!
All unwarn'd
Its fury came. Earth like a vassal shook.
Majestic trees flew hurtling through the air
Like rootless reeds.
There was no time for flight.
Buried in household wrecks, all helpless lay
Masses of quivering life.
Job's eldest son
That day held banquet for their numerous line
At his own house. With revelry and song,
One moment in the glow of kindred hearts
The lordly mansion rang, the next they lay
Crush'd neath its ruins.
He,--the childless sire,
Last of his race, and lonely as the pine
That crisps and blackens 'neath the lightning shaft
Upon the cliff, with such a rushing tide
The mountain billows of his misery came,
Drove they not Reason from her beacon-hold?
Swept they not his strong trust in Heaven away?

List,--list,--the sufferer speaks.
"The Lord who gave
Hath taken away,--and blessed be His name."

Oh Patriarch!--teach us, mid this changeful life
Not to mistake the ownership of joys
Entrusted to us for a little while,
But when the Great Dispenser shall reclaim
His loans, to render them with praises back,
As best befits the indebted.
Should a tear
Moisten the offering, He who knows our frame
And well remembereth that we are but dust,
Is full of pity.
It was said of old
Time conquer'd Grief. But unto me it seems
That Grief overmastereth Time. It shows how wide
The chasm between us, and our smitten joys
And saps the strength wherewith at first we went
Into life's battle. We perchance, have dream'd
That the sweet smile the sunbeam of our home
The prattle of the babe the Spoiler seiz'd,
Had but gone from us for a little while,--
And listen'd in our fallacy of hope
At hush of eve for the returning step
That wake the inmost pulses of the heart
To extasy,--till iron-handed Grief
Press'd down the nevermore into our soul,
Deadening us with its weight.
The man of Uz
As the slow lapse of days and nights reveal'd
The desolation of his poverty
Felt every nerve that at the first great shock
Was paralyzed, grow sensitive and shrink
As from a fresh-cut wound. There was no son
To come in beauty of his manly prime
With words of counsel and with vigorous hand
To aid him in his need, no daughter's arm
To twine around him in his weariness,
Nor kiss of grandchild at the even-tide
Going to rest, with prayer upon its lips.

Still a new trial waits.
The blessed health
Heaven's boon, thro' which with unbow'd form we bear
Burdens and ills, forsook him. Maladies
Of fierce and festering virulence attack'd
His swollen limbs. Incessant, grinding pains
Laid his strength prostrate, till he counted life
A loathed thing. Dire visions frighted sleep
That sweet restorer of the wasted frame,
And mid his tossings to and fro, he moan'd
Oh, when shall I arise, and Night be gone!

Despondence seized him. To the lowliest place
Alone he stole, and sadly took his seat
In dust and ashes.
She, his bosom friend
The sharer of his lot for many years,
Sought out his dark retreat. Shuddering she saw
His kingly form like living sepulchre,
And in the maddening haste of sorrow said
God hath forgotten.
She with him had borne
Unuttered woe o'er the untimely graves
Of all whom she had nourished,--shared with him
The silence of a home that hath no child,
The plunge from wealth to want, the base contempt
Of menial and of ingrate;--but to see
The dearest object of adoring love
Her next to God, a prey to vile disease
Hideous and loathsome, all the beauty marred
That she had worshipped from her ardent youth
Deeming it half divine, she could not bear,
Her woman's strength gave way, and impious words
In her despair she uttered.
But her lord
To deeper anguish stung by her defect
And rash advice, reprovingly replied
Pointing to Him who meeteth out below
Both good and evil in mysterious love,
And she was silenced.
What a sacred power
Hath hallow'd Friendship o'er the nameless ills
That throng our pilgrimage. Its sympathy,
Doth undergird the drooping, and uphold
The foot that falters in its miry path.
It grows more precious, as the hair grows grey.
Time's alchymy that rendereth so much dross
Back for our gay entrustments, shows more pure
The perfect essence of its sanctity,
Gold unalloyed.
How doth the cordial grasp,
Of hands that twined with ours in school days, now
Delight us as our sunbeam nears the west,
Soothing, perchance our self-esteem with proofs
That 'mid all faults the good have loved us still,
And quickening with redoubled energy
To do or suffer.
The three friends of Job
Who in the different regions where they dwelt
Teman, and Naamah and the Shuhite land,
Heard tidings of his dire calamity,
Moved by one impulse, journey'd to impart
Their sorrowing sympathy.
Yet when they saw
Him fallen so low, so chang'd that scarce a trace
Remained to herald his identity
Down by his side upon the earth, they sate
Uttering no language save the gushing tear,--
Spontaneous homage to a grief so great.

* * * * *

Oh Silence, born of Wisdom! we have felt
Thy fitness, when beside the smitten friend
We took our place. The voiceless sympathy
The tear, the tender pressure of the hand
Interpreted more perfectly than words
The purpose of our soul.
We speak to err,
Waking to agony some broken chord
Or bleeding nerve that slumbered. Words are weak,
When God's strong discipline doth try the soul;
And that deep silence was more eloquent
Than all the pomp of speech.
Yet the long pause
Of days and nights, gave scope for troubled thought
And their bewildered minds unskillfully
Launching all helmless on a sea of doubt
Explored the cause for which such woes were sent,
Forgetful that this mystery of life
Yields not to man's solution. Passing on
From natural pity to philosophy
That deems Heaven's judgments penal, they inferr'd
Some secret sin unshrived by penitence,
That drew such awful visitations down.
While studying thus the wherefore, with vain toil
Of painful cogitation, lo! a voice
Hollow and hoarse, as from the mouldering tomb,

"Perish the day in which I saw the light!
The day when first my mother's nursing care
Sheltered my helplessness. Let it not come
Into the number of the joyful months,
Let blackness stain it and the shades of death
Forever terrify it.
For it cut
Not off as an untimely birth my span,
Nor let me sleep where the poor prisoners hear
No more the oppressor, where the wicked cease
From troubling and the weary are at rest.
Now as the roar of waves my sorrows swell,
And sighs like tides burst forth till I forget
To eat my bread. That which I greatly feared
Hath come upon me. Not in heedless pride
Nor wrapped in arrogance of full content
I dwelt amid the tide of prosperous days,
And yet this trouble came."
With mien unmoved
The Temanite reprovingly replied:
"Who can refrain longer from words, even though
To speak be grief? Thou hast the instructor been
Of many, and their model how to act.
When trial came upon them, if their knees
Bow'd down, thou saidst, "be strong," and they obey'd.
But now it toucheth thee and thou dost shrink,
And murmuring, faint. The monitor forgets
The precepts he hath taught. Is this thy faith,
Thy confidence, the uprightness of thy way?
Whoever perish'd being innocent?
And when were those who walk'd in righteous ways
Cut off? How oft I've seen that those who sow
The seeds of evil secretly, and plow
Under a veil of darkness, reap the same.

* * * * *

In visions of the night, when deepest sleep
Falls upon men, fear seiz'd me, all my bones
Trembled, and every stiffening hair rose up.
A spirit pass'd before me, but I saw
No form thereof. I knew that there it stood,
Even though my straining eyes discern'd it not.
Then from its moveless lips a voice burst forth,
"Is man more just than God? Is mortal man
More pure than He who made him?
Lo, he puts
No trust in those who serve him, and doth charge
Angels with folly. How much less in them
Dwellers in tents of clay, whose pride is crush'd
Before the moth. From morn to eve they die
And none regard it."
So despise thou not
The chastening of the Almighty, ever just,
For did thy spirit please him, it should rise
More glorious from the storm-cloud, all the earth
At peace with thee, new offspring like the grass
Cheering thy home, and when thy course was done
Even as a shock of corn comes fully ripe
Into the garner should thy burial be
Beldv'd and wept of all."

Mournful arose
The sorrowful response.
"Oh that my grief
Were in the balance laid by faithful hands
And feeling hearts. To the afflicted soul
Friends should be comforters. But mine have dealt
Deceitfully, as fails the shallow brook
When summer's need is sorest.
Did I say
Bring me a gift? or from your flowing wealth
Give solace to my desolate penury?
Or with your pitying influence neutralize
My cup of scorn poured out by abject hands?
That thus ye mock me with contemptuous words
And futile arguments, and dig a pit
In which to whelm the man you call a friend?
Still darkly hinting at some heinous sin
Mysteriously concealed?
Writes conscious guilt
No transcript on the brow? Hangs it not out
Its signal there, altho' it seem to hide
'Neath an impervious shroud?
Look thro' the depths
Of my unshrinking eye, deep, deep within.
What see ye there? what gives suspicion birth?
As longs the laborer for the setting sun,
Watching the lengthening shadows that foretell
The time of rest, yet day by day returns
To the same task again, so I endure
Wearisome nights and months of burdening woe.
I would not alway live this loathed life
Whose days are vanity. Soon shall I sleep
Low in the dust, and when the morning comes
And thro' its curtaining mists ye seek my face
I shall not be."

* * * * *

Earnest the Shuhite spake,
"How long shall these thy words, like eddying winds
Fall empty on the ear?
Doth God pervert
Justice and judgment? If thy way was pure,
Thy supplication from an upright heart
He would awake and make thy latter end
More blest than thy beginning.
For inquire
Of ancient times, of History's honor'd scroll
And of the grey-hair'd fathers, if our words
Seem light, we who were born but yesterday.
Ask them and they shall teach thee, as the rush,
Or as the flag forsaken of the pod,
So shall the glory of the hypocrite
Fade in its greenness.
Tho' his house may seem
Awhile to flourish, it shall not endure.
Even tho' he grasp it with despairing strength
It shall deceive his trust and pass away,
As fleets the spider's filmy web. Behold
God will not cast away the perfect man
Nor help the evil doer."

* * * * *

In low tones,
Sepulchral, and with pain, the sufferer spake,
"I know that this is truth, but how can man
Be just with God? How shall he dare contend
With Him who stretches out the sky and treads
Upon the mountain billows of the sea,
And sealeth up the stars?
Array'd in strength,
He passeth by me, but I see Him not.
I hear His chariot-wheels, yet fear to ask
Where goest Thou?
If I, indeed, were pure,
And perfect, like the