Classic Poem

W HEN the third morning of Creation shone,
And from the naked earth
Rose the green herb, and grass, and branching tree full-grown,
'Twas thus decree'd
By the Eternal M IND
And Voice of God that called them into birth,
That they should grow:
" The green herb yielding seed,
The fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind,
Whose seed is in itself upon the earth:
And it was so. "

Thus sprang that living verdure into being,
Whose annual generations reach
Beyond the birth of A DAM . All agreeing,
A lesson of obedience do they teach;
Obedience to the Voice that brought them forth:
For, whether all alone they grow,
Scattered by breezes to and fro,
Or, side by side,
They cover fields or spread in forests wide,
Or struggle heavenward in the frozen North,
Or clothe in endless green the burning Line;
From age to age, with faith that never sleeps,
The vegetable world unbroken keeps
That Law Divine.

But never to the curious eye
Do they unfold their hidden mystery;
Nor any seed e'er tells
How, in itself, its life mysterious dwells.
While in thy hand, or in the light of day,
It seems an inert thing,
All dry and dead, nor life nor motion shows
Within its rounded ring:
But bury it away
Down in the dark damp earth, — it dies and grows.
The blade comes first;
Soon the green leaves are shown;
Then buds appear, that shortly burst,
And opening show the tinted flowers full-blown,
Of purple, white, yellow or orange hue,
Of pink or bright carnation,
Or velvet brown, deep red, or purer blue.
All this is beauteous preparation;
But now, at length,
And all unseen,
The plant mature puts forth its chiefest strength.
Within the pod of tender green,
Or stronger sphere o'ertopped with crown imperial,
Under the shag-bark's russet suit,
Or veiled 'neath gauzy wings for flight airial,
Deep in the swelling womb of pulpy fruit,
Or housed within the rugged cone,
Or tough-ribbed shell, or hollow-chambered stone;
The plant, with patient care
And instinct rare,
Gathers from every fibre of its frame
The express idea of the same —
Ideas which, like those within the brain,
Seem to maintain
A certain place,
Yet occupy no space:
Slowly with sap the ripening globes it feeds,
And in the germ of all the thousand seeds
Within its teeming cup,
Stores its own image up,
Even to the seed wherein that image lies;
And in their memories,
With wondrous power, stamps both
The time and order of their birth and growth.

And all the while the secret cell,
Where this mysterious labor is perfecting,
Is guarded well,
By prickly beard its pointed spears erecting,
Or shielded by tough rind,
Or tangled furze,
Or else entrenched behind
A rampart bristling thick with barbed burrs;
Or stinging thorns do guard the approach,
Or 'tis perchance by waxy husk defended,
Lest insect foes encroach
Ere Nature's last and greatest work is ended.
Life, wondrous Life, hath here
Begotten wondrous Life, yea manifold,
In silence dark, and secrecy;
And these heirs, in their tiny bosoms, hold,
The hoarded life-spring of another year.
And yet no mortal eye
Hath seen the mode, nor listening ear
Hath heard the story told;
While boastful Science, like the mole,
With microscopic eyes
But burrows in the dark and cannot rise
To see the ethereal spirit that informs the whole.

Here is the grand climateric
Of this their annual life. And now for them
No more is left but gradual decay.
The shrunken stem,
Erewhile so vigorous and thick,
In time gives way,
And drops the fruit to earth,
Again to die; and dying, to bring forth
Another generation to the birth.
Soon fade the leaves to shades of lifeless brown;
Awhile they shiver in the frosty air,
Then flutter down
To rise no more,
Leaving the face of Nature drear and bare:
And all is o'er!

A S OWER went forth to sow
The field wherein he sowed,

The wayward heart of man while here below;
The Seed, the Word of God.
That living Word, — which, to the worldly eye,
Or on the cold unfeeling tongue,
Long powerless and dead
Appears to lie,
Like bread
For naught upon the waters flung, —
Will, when the heart is soft and young,
Or its tough soil is broken up by woe,
Or by sharp anguish wrung,
Take root; and soon the tender fibres grow,
Spreading like silvery threads in every part,
Until their heavenly net-work fills the wounded heart.

Repentance first appears,
Scarce rising from the ground through humble fear.
Drying her bitter tears,
Soon child-like Faith, with vision clear,
Beholds things yet unseen by mortal eye.
Hope like the bud of promise swells.
And crowning Charity
Openeth like the flower in perfect bloom,
Within whose bosom are deep wells
Of sweets, where not in vain the hungry calls,
Wherein the thirsty findeth drink,
And round the brink
The dew of gentle pity softly falls;
While universal love, like rich perfume,
For ever breathing forth,
Rises to heaven, and floats along the earth.

But yet a higher effort of the soul
Is needed to impart
The good seed to another heart.
For this great end, the whole
Of grace and nourishment and power divine
Is drawn to secret action; while without —
A faithful sign
Of love — the heart is warded all about
With trials and afflictions sore;
Heart-weariness we feel, and pain;
Gaunt Poverty, with all his hungry train;
And o'er and o'er
Our hopes are crushed, our longings blighted;
Friends that once loved, now love no more;
Envy and malice, in close league united,
Sting with envenomed tongues our name,
And feel no shame;
Diseases, slow or sudden, waste the frame,
And where they go before,
Death follows after, knocking at the door,
Till, one by one, are all
The loved ones carried forth to meet the call.
Nor are we ever left
Alone with happiness, while here below;
Nor are our feeble souls bereft
Of all the aids of pain and grief and woe,
That wean our lingering hearts away
From glittering dust and baubles of a day.
We need this rough and thorny hedge
To keep the base defiling world aloof,
Lest our bright Spirit-sword, of heavenly proof,
Should cloud its beaming blade, or blunt its edge.

Nor all alike can sow
The holy seed: some, like a fruitful tree,
May live to see
The germs they scatter bud and grow,
Till far and wide, all round,
The rising forests shade the fertile ground.
Others, like annuals frail,
At earlier ages fail,
Die ere they conquer in the fruitless strife,
Yet dying, quicken some loved soul to life.

Thus from the time
When first that S OWER went forth to sow,
In every age, in every clime,
The Holy Seed hath grown, and still doth grow.
Each generation as it rose, receiving
The precious germs from those that went before,
Planted them deep in hearts believing;
While these the burthen bore
To sons and daughters, who again brought forth
Another generation to the birth.
And yet no eye hath seen, nor listening ear
Hath heard, nor mortal mind
Can comprehend that life-birth here.
'Tis like the wind,
That where it listeth, bloweth;
We hear the sound thereof, yet no man knoweth
Whence it hath come, or whitherward it goeth.
Thus it hath been, and still shall be,
Till H E that sowed the seed again shall come,
And Angel-reapers, both from land and sea,
Gather the harvest home!

Another S OWER , at the time
When righteous A BEL fell, went forth to sow.
And, from the world's young prime
Even until now,
His never-resting hand hath sown
Seed for an harvest not his own.
Charnels and catacombs, church-yards and graves
He fills; nor only these,
But on all hills, vales, plains and mountains high,
Or inland far, or washed by ocean-waves,
He strews the ripened grain;
While, buried in the furrows of the sea,
Deep down the bosom of the sounding main,
His countless myriads lie.

But are not these all dead?
How can they then
Be made to rise again?
Long before Egypt's days of glory fled, —
And when her swarthy sons
Embalmed for burial, in the fond conceit
That so their loved ones
All incorrupt might slumber,
Till they should rise to meet
Their final judgment, when the mystic number
Of this world's age should be complete, —
A single corn of wheat,
Grown in her Nile-enriched glebes,
Was in a dead man's spicy shroud enclosed,
And buried in the catacombs of Thebes;
There undisturbed reposed,
Till after thrice a thousand years had flown,
As if arisen from the dead, behold
That seed was disentombed and sown,
And grew, and brought forth fruit an hundred fold.

Now shall our F ATHER , who, in love for all
H IS wondrous works, doth mark the sparrow's fall,
Shall H E remember this one little seed,
That its frail life shall be for ages kept,
And perish never:
And yet hath H E decreed
That the man's body, by whose side it slept,
Shall lie forgotten in the bonds of Death forever?
Nay, shall His hand thus clothe the grass,
Whose fading glories quickly pass,
And not much more clothe us, when we,
Though mortal, put on immortality?

Soon shall the trumpet sound,
Whose piercing note proclaims to earth and ocean
The Spring-time of the Dead.
Then shall we see
These mortal seeds of immortality,
No longer winter-bound
By that corruption wherein they were sown,
But raised incorrupt to life and motion.
Forth from their earthy bed,
Swift as the light, behold them high upgrown;
They lift their heads to heaven; their leaves
Glance in the beams from Zion's T EMPLE shed;
And as the quickening S PIRIT gently breathes,
The waving harvest bows the adoring head.
In this their perfect glory clad,
The whole round world and all that it contains
Burst forth in triumph glad.
Hills nod to hills, and plains to plains
Their answering salutation fling;
For now the praises of the L AMB employ
New-tuned voices;
The swelling chorus bounds from lands to lands;
The valleys laugh and sing,
The sea makes merry with his liquid noises,
Floods clap their hands,
And hoary mountains leap and shout aloud for joy!