How fall the idols false and grim! And to! their hideous wreck above The emblems of the Lamb and Dove! Man turns from God, not God from him; And guilt, in suffering, whispers Love! The world sits at the feet of Christ, Unknowing, blind, and unconsoled; It yet shall touch His garment's fold, And feel the heavenly Alchemist Transform its very dust to gold. The theme befitting angel tongues Beyond a mortal's scope has grown. O heart of mine! with reverence own The fulness which to it belongs, And trust the unknown for the known. 1859. THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT. "And I sought, whence is Evil: I set before the eye of my spirit the whole creation; whatsoever we see therein,--sea, earth, air, stars, trees, moral creatures,--yea, whatsoever there is we do not see,--angels and spiritual powers. Where is evil, and whence comes it, since God the Good hath created all things? Why made He anything at all of evil, and not rather by His Almightiness cause it not to be? These thoughts I turned in my miserable heart, overcharged with most gnawing cares." "And, admonished to return to myself, I entered even into my inmost soul, Thou being my guide, and beheld even beyond my soul and mind the Light unchangeable. He who knows the Truth knows what that Light is, and he that knows it knows Eternity! O--Truth, who art Eternity! Love, who art Truth! Eternity, who art Love! And I beheld that Thou madest all things good, and to Thee is nothing whatsoever evil. From the angel to the worm, from the first motion to the last, Thou settest each in its place, and everything is good in its kind. Woe is me!--how high art Thou in the highest, how deep in the deepest! and Thou never departest from us and we scarcely return to Thee." --AUGUSTINE'S Soliloquies, Book VII. The fourteen centuries fall away Between us and the Afric saint, And at his side we urge, to-day, The immemorial quest and old complaint. No outward sign to us is given,-- From sea or earth comes no reply; Hushed as the warm Numidian heaven He vainly questioned bends our frozen sky. No victory comes of all our strife,-- From all we grasp the meaning slips; The Sphinx sits at the gate of life, With the old question on her awful lips. In paths unknown we hear the feet Of fear before, and guilt behind; We pluck the wayside fruit, and eat Ashes and dust beneath its golden rind. From age to age descends unchecked The sad bequest of sire to son, The body's taint, the mind's defect; Through every web of life the dark threads run. Oh, why and whither? God knows all; I only know that He is good, And that whatever may befall Or here or there, must be the best that could. Between the dreadful cherubim A Father's face I still discern, As Moses looked of old on Him, And saw His glory into goodness turn!