His answer was: “My spirit’s present with you, friends. But issue from this hermitage my power transcends.” 245 The captains twelve, of legions, intercession made; His grieved disciples raised a wail, a serenade: “Great evil’s lighted on us! Ah! Beloved One! We’re orphans made; our parent, thou, away art gone! Raise not such pretext; push us not to our wit’s end. We sob and sigh; we beat our breasts. Do comfort send! Thou’st pampered, spoilt us with thy wondrous eloquence; With doctrine from thy lips our souls cannot dispense. Torment us not, for God’s sake! Pity on us take! Be kind! This day, ‘To-morrow’ say not; to us wake! 250 Our hearts are rapt in thee; no heart in us remains. Heartless and spiritless are we, poor bankrupt swains! Like fishes out of water, so we writhe and gasp. The dam break down; let flow the stream; avert death’s grasp! Thou art the very paragon, the phœnix of the age. Heaven’s mercy, save us; or, we perish, we enrage!” To them he thus: “O men of little sense, take heed; You foolishly are seeking elsewhere what you need. Your ears stop up with wool; list not to speech of man; The mote that blinds your eyes cast out. Then, see you can. 255 With cotton in your outward ears, you’ll plainly hear The still small voice of conscience, drowned now by your fear. All outward sense discard; all thought, reflection flee; And straight you’ll hear, within, God’s voice: ‘Come unto Me.’ So long as with chitchat you keep yourselves awake, Communion with the angels you in sleep forsake. Our words and acts make up our outward habitudes; Our inward man’s our converse with infinitudes. Our senses barren are; they come of barren soil; Our soul, like Jesus, walks the sea without turmoil. 260 Our outer man’s a barren wilderness, I ween; The inner man, ’tis, sounds the depths of the Unseen. If all our life be spent in chase of mundane things, Our paths must lead o’er wastes, o’er hills, o’er ocean springs. The Fount of Life,[109] where shall we find in such a course? Death’s billows how avoid, and how escape remorse? The desert’s moving sandhills are our schemes and plans. Life-rills are abnegation, self-denial, man’s.”