I cannot brook The shake o’ the head and earnest, sorrowing glance, Which often seem to say:—“Be wise in time! Give up the iron key that locks your heart. I grant you charity, and patient zeal, And something of a young, romantic love For what is good, as children love the fields And birds and babbling brooks, they know not why. You have your moral virtues, but you err: To err is fatal. O, my heart is faint Lest that sweet prize I win should not be yours!” In some such wise I read your half-dropped thoughts; Yet wondrous compensation falls to all, And every soul has strongholds of its own, Invisible, yet answering to its needs. And even I may have a secret tower Up storm-cleft Pisgah, whence I see beyond Jordan, and far across the happy plains, Where gleams the Holy City, like a queen, The crown of all our hopes and perfect faith. I may have gone somewhat within the veil, Though few repose serenely in the light Of that divinest splendor, till they shine, With countenance aglow, like him of old,— Prophet and priest and warrior, all in one. But every human path leads on to God; He holds a myriad finer threads than gold, And strong as holy wishes, drawing us With delicate tension upward to Himself. You see the strand that reaches down to you; Haply I see mine own, and make essay To trace its glimmerings—up the shadowy hills Forever narrowing to that unknown sky. There grows a hedge about you pulpit-folk: You reason _ex cathedra_. Little gain Have we to clash in tourney on the least Of points, wherewith you trammel down the Faith, It being, at outset, understood right well By lay knights-errant, that their Reverend foes, Fore-pledged to hold their own, will sound their trumps, Though spearless and unhorsed! Why take the field, When, at the best, both sides go bowing off With mutual courtesy, and fair white flags Afloat at camp, and every fight is drawn? As soon encounter statues, balanced well Upon their granite, fashioned not to move, And drawing all mankind to hold in awe Their grim persistence. If, indeed, I sin In counting somewhat freely on that Love From which, through rolling ages, worlds have sprung, And—last and best of all—the lords of worlds, Through type on type uplifted from the clay; If I have been exultant in the thought That such humanity came so near to God, He held us as His children, and would find Imperial progress through the halls of Time For every soul,—why, then, my crescent faith Clings round the promise; if it spread beyond, You think, too far, I say that Peter sprang Upon the waves of surging Galilee, While all the eleven hugged the ship in fear: The waters were as stone unto his feet Until he doubted, even then the Christ Put forth a blesséd hand, and drew him on To closer knowledge!