Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/124

92   Should wander?’ Burning with a hidden fire That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee For pity and for help, as thou to me. Pray for me, O my friend!” But Nathan cried, “Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!”

Side by side In the low sunshine by the turban stone They knelt; each made his brother’s woe his own, Forgetting, in the agony and stress Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness; Peace, for his friend besought, his own became; His prayers were answered in another’s name; And, when at last they rose up to embrace, Each saw God’s pardon in his brother’s face!

Long after, when his headstone gathered moss, Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos In Rabbi Nathan’s hand these words were read: “Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead; Forget it in love’s service, and the debt Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget; Heaven’s gate is shut to him who comes alone; Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!”

winding way the serpent takes
 * The mystic water took,

From where, to count its beaded lakes,
 * The forest sped its brook.

A narrow space ’twixt shore and shore,
 * For sun or stars to fall,

While evermore, behind, before,
 * Closed in the forest wall.

The dim wood hiding underneath
 * Wan flowers without a name;

Life tangled with decay and death,
 * League after league the same.

Unbroken over swamp and hill
 * The rounding shadow lay,

Save where the river cut at will
 * A pathway to the day.

Beside that track of air and light,
 * Weak as a child unweaned,

At shut of day a Christian knight
 * Upon his henchman leaned.

The embers of the sunset’s fires
 * Along the clouds burned down;

“I see,” he said, “the domes and spires
 * Of Norembega town.”

“Alack! the domes, O master mine,
 * Are golden clouds on high;

Yon spire is but the branchless pine
 * That cuts the evening sky.”

“Oh, hush and hark! What sounds are these
 * But chants and holy hymns?”

“Thou hear’st the breeze that stirs the trees
 * Through all their leafy limbs.”

“Is it a chapel bell that fills
 * The air with its low tone?”

“Thou hear’st the tinkle of the rills,
 * The insect’s vesper drone.”

“The Christ be praised!—He sets for me
 * A blessed cross in sight!”

“Now, nay, ’t is but yon blasted tree
 * With two gaunt arms outright!”

“Be it wind so sad or tree so stark,
 * It mattereth not, my knave;

Methinks to funeral hymns I hark,
 * The cross is for my grave!

“My life is sped; I shall not see
 * My home-set sails again;