Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/467

Rh “Did not the gifts of sun and air To good and ill alike declare The all-compassionate Father’s care?

“In the white soul that stooped to raise The lost one from her evil ways, Thou saw’st the Christ, whom angels praise!

“A bodiless Divinity, The still small Voice that spake to thee Was the Holy Spirit’s mystery!

“O blind of sight, of faith how small! Father, and Son, and Holy Call; This day thou hast denied them all!

“Revealed in love and sacrifice, The Holiest passed before thine eyes, One and the same, in threefold guise.

“The equal Father in rain and sun, His Christ in the good to evil done, His Voice in thy soul;—and the Three are One!”

I shut my grave Aquinas fast; The monkish gloss of ages past, The schoolman’s creed aside I cast.

And my heart answered, “Lord, I see How Three are One, and One is Three; Thy riddle hath been read to me!”

Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,
 * Her stones of emptiness remain;

Around her sculptured mystery sweeps
 * The lonely waste of Edom’s plain.

From the doomed dwellers in the cleft
 * The bow of vengeance turns not back;

Of all her myriads none are left
 * Along the Wady Mousa’s track.

Clear in the hot Arabian day
 * Her arches spring, her statues climb;

Unchanged, the graven wonders pay
 * No tribute to the spoiler, Time!

Unchanged the awful lithograph
 * Of power and glory undertrod;

Of nations scattered like the chaff
 * Blown from the threshing-floor of God.

Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn
 * From Petra’s gates with deeper awe,

To mark afar the burial urn
 * Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor;

And where upon its ancient guard
 * Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,—

Looks from its turrets desertward,
 * And keeps the watch that God has set.

The same as when in thunders loud
 * It heard the voice of God to man,

As when it saw in fire and cloud
 * The angels walk in Israel’s van!

Or when from Ezion-Geber’s way
 * It saw the long procession file,

And heard the Hebrew timbrels play
 * The music of the lordly Nile;