Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/490

458  Who made ye mine avengers,
 * Or told ye of my needs;

I bless men and ye curse them,
 * I love them and ye hate;

Ye bite and tear each other,
 * I suffer long and wait.

Ye bow to ghastly symbols,
 * To cross and scourge and thorn;

Ye seek his Syrian manger
 * Who in the heart is born.

For the dead Christ, not the living,
 * Ye watch His empty grave,

Whose life alone within you
 * Has power to bless and save.

O blind ones, outward groping,
 * The idle quest forego;

Who listens to His inward voice
 * Alone of Him shall know.

His love all love exceeding
 * The heart must needs recall,

Its self-surrendering freedom,
 * Its loss that gaineth all.

Climb not the holy mountains,
 * Their eagles know not me;

Seek not the Blessed Islands,
 * I dwell not in the sea.

Gone is the mount of Meru,
 * The triple gods are gone,

And, deaf to all the lama’s prayers,
 * The Buddha slumbers on.

No more from rocky Horeb
 * The smitten waters gush;

Fallen is Bethel’s ladder,
 * Quenched is the burning bush.

The jewels of the Urim
 * And Thummim all are dim;

The fire has left the altar,
 * The sign the teraphim.

No more in ark or hill grove
 * The Holiest abides;

Not in the scroll’s dead letter
 * The eternal secret hides.

The eye shall fail that searches
 * For me the hollow sky;

The far is even as the near,
 * The low is as the high.

What if the earth is hiding
 * Her old faiths, long outworn?

What is it to the changeless truth
 * That yours shall fail in turn?

What if the o’erturned altar
 * Lays bare the ancient lie?

What if the dreams and legends
 * Of the world’s childhood die?

Have ye not still my witness
 * Within yourselves alway,

My hand that on the keys of life
 * For bliss or bale I lay?

Still, in perpetual judgment,
 * I hold assize within,

With sure reward of holiness,
 * And dread rebuke of sin.

A light, a guide, a warning,
 * A presence ever near,

Through the deep silence of the flesh
 * I reach the inward ear.

My Gerizim and Ebal
 * Are in each human soul,

The still, small voice of blessing,
 * And Sinai’s thunder-roll.

The stern behest of duty,
 * The doom-book open thrown,

The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear,
 * Are with yourselves alone.”

A gold and purple sunset
 * Flowed down the broad Moselle;

On hills of vine and meadow lands
 * The peace of twilight fell.

A slow, cool wind of evening
 * Blew over leaf and bloom;

And, faint and far, the Angelus
 * Rang from Saint Matthew’s tomb.

Then up rose Master Echard,
 * And marvelled: “Can it be

That here, in dream and vision,
 * The Lord hath talked with me?”

He went his way; behind him
 * The shrines of saintly dead,