Miriam

One Sabbath day my friend and I     After the meeting, quietly     Passed from the crowded village lanes,     White with dry dust for lack of rains,     And climbed the neighboring slope, with feet     Slackened and heavy from the heat,     Although the day was wellnigh done,     And the low angle of the sun     Along the naked hillside cast     Our shadows as of giants vast.     We reached, at length, the topmost swell,     Whence, either way, the green turf fell     In terraces of nature down     To fruit-hung orchards, and the town     With white, pretenceless houses, tall     Church-steeples, and, o'ershadowing all,     Huge mills whose windows had the look     Of eager eyes that ill could brook     The Sabbath rest. We traced the track     Of the sea-seeking river back,     Glistening for miles above its mouth,     Through the long valley to the south,     And, looking eastward, cool to view,     Stretched the illimitable blue     Of ocean, from its curved coast-line;     Sombred and still, the warm sunshine     Filled with pale gold-dust all the reach     Of slumberous woods from hill to beach,     Slanted on walls of thronged retreats     From city toil and dusty streets,     On grassy bluff, and dune of sand,     And rocky islands miles from land;     Touched the far-glancing sails, and showed     White lines of foam where long waves flowed     Dumb in the distance. In the north,     Dim through their misty hair, looked forth     The space-dwarfed mountains to the sea,     From mystery to mystery!     So, sitting on that green hill-slope,     We talked of human life, its hope     And fear, and unsolved doubts, and what     It might have been, and yet was not.     And, when at last the evening air     Grew sweeter for the bells of prayer     Ringing in steeples far below,     We watched the people churchward go,     Each to his place, as if thereon     The true shekinah only shone;     And my friend queried how it came     To pass that they who owned the same     Great Master still could not agree     To worship Him in company.     Then, broadening in his thought, he ran     Over the whole vast field of man,     The varying forms of faith and creed     That somehow served the holders' need;     In which, unquestioned, undenied,     Uncounted millions lived and died;     The bibles of the ancient folk,     Through which the heart of nations spoke;     The old moralities which lent     To home its sweetness and content,     And rendered possible to bear     The life of peoples everywhere     And asked if we, who boast of light,     Claim not a too exclusive right     To truths which must for all be meant,     Like rain and sunshine freely sent.     In bondage to the letter still,     We give it power to cramp and kill,     To tax God's fulness with a scheme     Narrower than Peter's house-top dream,     His wisdom and his love with plans     Poor and inadequate as man's.     It must be that He witnesses     Somehow to all men that He is     That something of His saving grace     Reaches the lowest of the race,     Who, through strange creed and rite, may draw     The hints of a diviner law.     We walk in clearer light; but then,     Is He not God? are they not men?     Are His responsibilities     For us alone and not for these?     And I made answer: "Truth is one;     And, in all lands beneath the sun,     Whoso hath eyes to see may see     The tokens of its unity.     No scroll of creed its fulness wraps,     We trace it not by school-boy maps,     Free as the sun and air it is     Of latitudes and boundaries.     In Vedic verse, in dull Koran,     Are messages of good to man;     The angels to our Aryan sires     Talked by the earliest household fires;     The prophets of the elder day,     The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,     Read not the riddle all amiss     Of higher life evolved from this.     "Nor doth it lessen what He taught,     Or make the gospel Jesus brought     Less precious, that His lips retold     Some portion of that truth of old;     Denying not the proven seers,     The tested wisdom of the years;     Confirming with his own impress     The common law of righteousness.     We search the world for truth; we cull     The good, the pure, the beautiful,     From graven stone and written scroll,     From all old flower-fields of the soul;     And, weary seekers of the best,     We come back laden from our quest,     To find that all the sages said     Is in the Book our mothers read,     And all our treasure of old thought     In His harmonious fulness wrought     Who gathers in one sheaf complete     The scattered blades of God's sown wheat,     The common growth that maketh good     His all-embracing Fatherhood.     "Wherever through the ages rise     The altars of self-sacrifice,     Where love its arms has opened wide,     Or man for man has calmly died,     I see the same white wings outspread     That hovered o'er the Master's head!     Up from undated time they come,     The martyr souls of heathendom,     And to His cross and passion bring     Their fellowship of suffering.     I trace His presence in the blind     Pathetic gropings of my kind,     In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung,     In cradle-hymns of life they sung,     Each, in its measure, but a part     Of the unmeasured Over-Heart;     And with a stronger faith confess     The greater that it owns the less.     Good cause it is for thankfulness     That the world-blessing of His life     With the long past is not at strife;     That the great marvel of His death     To the one order witnesseth,     No doubt of changeless goodness wakes,     No link of cause and sequence breaks,     But, one with nature, rooted is     In the eternal verities;     Whereby, while differing in degree     As finite from infinity,     The pain and loss for others borne,     Love's crown of suffering meekly worn,     The life man giveth for his friend     Become vicarious in the end;     Their healing place in nature take,     And make life sweeter for their sake.     "So welcome I from every source     The tokens of that primal Force,     Older than heaven itself, yet new     As the young heart it reaches to,     Beneath whose steady impulse rolls     The tidal wave of human souls;     Guide, comforter, and inward word,     The eternal spirit of the Lord     Nor fear I aught that science brings     From searching through material things;     Content to let its glasses prove,     Not by the letter's oldness move,     The myriad worlds on worlds that course     The spaces of the universe;     Since everywhere the Spirit walks     The garden of the heart, and talks     With man, as under Eden's trees,     In all his varied languages.     Why mourn above some hopeless flaw     In the stone tables of the law,     When scripture every day afresh     Is traced on tablets of the flesh?     By inward sense, by outward signs,     God's presence still the heart divines;     Through deepest joy of Him we learn,     In sorest grief to Him we turn,     And reason stoops its pride to share     The child-like instinct of a prayer."     And then, as is my wont, I told     A story of the days of old,     Not found in printed books, in sooth,     A fancy, with slight hint of truth,     Showing how differing faiths agree     In one sweet law of charity.     Meanwhile the sky had golden grown,     Our faces in its glory shone;     But shadows down the valley swept,     And gray below the ocean slept,     As time and space I wandered o'er     To tread the Mogul's marble floor,     And see a fairer sunset fall     On Jumna's wave and Agra's wall.     The good Shah Akbar (peace be his alway!)     Came forth from the Divan at close of day     Bowed with the burden of his many cares,     Worn with the hearing of unnumbered prayers,     Wild cries for justice, the importunate     Appeals of greed and jealousy and hate,     And all the strife of sect and creed and rite,     Santon and Gouroo waging holy fight     For the wise monarch, claiming not to be     Allah's avenger, left his people free,     With a faint hope, his Book scarce justified,     That all the paths of faith, though severed wide,     O'er which the feet of prayerful reverence passed,     Met at the gate of Paradise at last.     He sought an alcove of his cool hareem,     Where, far beneath, he heard the Jumna's stream     Lapse soft and low along his palace wall,     And all about the cool sound of the fall     Of fountains, and of water circling free     Through marble ducts along the balcony;     The voice of women in the distance sweet,     And, sweeter still, of one who, at his feet,     Soothed his tired ear with songs of a far land     Where Tagus shatters on the salt sea-sand     The mirror of its cork-grown hills of drouth     And vales of vine, at Lisbon's harbor-mouth.     The date-palms rustled not; the peepul laid     Its topmost boughs against the balustrade,     Motionless as the mimic leaves and vines     That, light and graceful as the shawl-designs     Of Delhi or Umritsir, twined in stone;     And the tired monarch, who aside had thrown     The day's hard burden, sat from care apart,     And let the quiet steal into his heart     From the still hour. Below him Agra slept,     By the long light of sunset overswept     The river flowing through a level land,     By mango-groves and banks of yellow sand,     Skirted with lime and orange, gay kiosks,     Fountains at play, tall minarets of mosques,     Fair pleasure-gardens, with their flowering trees     Relieved against the mournful cypresses;     And, air-poised lightly as the blown sea-foam,     The marble wonder of some holy dome     Hung a white moonrise over the still wood,     Glassing its beauty in a stiller flood.     Silent the monarch gazed, until the night     Swift-falling hid the city from his sight;     Then to the woman at his feet he said     "Tell me, O Miriam, something thou hast read     In childhood of the Master of thy faith,     Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith     'He was a true apostle, yea, a Word     And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.'     Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know     By what thou art, O dearest, it is so.     As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays,     The sweet disciple speaks her Master's praise."     Then Miriam, glad of heart, (for in some sort     She cherished in the Moslem's liberal court     The sweet traditions of a Christian child;     And, through her life of sense, the undefiled     And chaste ideal of the sinless One     Gazed on her with an eye she might not shun,     The sad, reproachful look of pity, born     Of love that hath no part in wrath or scorn,)     Began, with low voice and moist eyes, to tell     Of the all-loving Christ, and what befell     When the fierce zealots, thirsting for her blood,     Dragged to his feet a shame of womanhood.     How, when his searching answer pierced within     Each heart, and touched the secret of its sin,     And her accusers fled his face before,     He bade the poor one go and sin no more.     And Akbar said, after a moment's thought,     "Wise is the lesson by thy prophet taught;     Woe unto him who judges and forgets     What hidden evil his own heart besets!     Something of this large charity I find     In all the sects that sever human kind;     I would to Allah that their lives agreed     More nearly with the lesson of their creed!     Those yellow Lamas who at Meerut pray     By wind and water power, and love to say     'He who forgiveth not shall, unforgiven,     Fail of the rest of Buddha,' and who even     Spare the black gnat that stings them, vex my ears     With the poor hates and jealousies and fears     Nursed in their human hives. That lean, fierce priest     Of thy own people, (be his heart increased     By Allah's love!) his black robes smelling yet     Of Goa's roasted Jews, have I not met     Meek-faced, barefooted, crying in the street     The saying of his prophet true and sweet,     'He who is merciful shall mercy meet!'"     But, next day, so it chanced, as night began     To fall, a murmur through the hareem ran     That one, recalling in her dusky face     The full-lipped, mild-eyed beauty of a race     Known as the blameless Ethiops of Greek song,     Plotting to do her royal master wrong,     Watching, reproachful of the lingering light,     The evening shadows deepen for her flight,     Love-guided, to her home in a far land,     Now waited death at the great Shah's command.     Shapely as that dark princess for whose smile     A world was bartered, daughter of the Nile     Herself, and veiling in her large, soft eyes     The passion and the languor of her skies,     The Abyssinian knelt low at the feet     Of her stern lord: "O king, if it be meet,     And for thy honor's sake," she said, "that I,     Who am the humblest of thy slaves, should die,     I will not tax thy mercy to forgive.     Easier it is to die than to outlive     All that life gave me, him whose wrong of thee     Was but the outcome of his love for me,     Cherished from childhood, when, beneath the shade     Of templed Axum, side by side we played.     Stolen from his arms, my lover followed me     Through weary seasons over land and sea;     And two days since, sitting disconsolate     Within the shadow of the hareem gate,     Suddenly, as if dropping from the sky,     Down from the lattice of the balcony     Fell the sweet song by Tigre's cowherds sung     In the old music of his native tongue.     He knew my voice, for love is quick of ear,     Answering in song.     This night he waited near     To fly with me. The fault was mine alone     He knew thee not, he did but seek his own;     Who, in the very shadow of thy throne,     Sharing thy bounty, knowing all thou art,     Greatest and best of men, and in her heart     Grateful to tears for favor undeserved,     Turned ever homeward, nor one moment swerved     From her young love. He looked into my eyes,     He heard my voice, and could not otherwise     Than he hath done; yet, save one wild embrace     When first we stood together face to face,     And all that fate had done since last we met     Seemed but a dream that left us children yet,     He hath not wronged thee nor thy royal bed;     Spare him, O king! and slay me in his stead!"     But over Akbar's brows the frown hung black,     And, turning to the eunuch at his back,     "Take them," he said, "and let the Jumna's waves     Hide both my shame and these accursed slaves!"     His loathly length the unsexed bondman bowed     "On my head be it!"     Straightway from a cloud     Of dainty shawls and veils of woven mist     The Christian Miriam rose, and, stooping, kissed     The monarch's hand. Loose down her shoulders bare     Swept all the rippled darkness of her hair,     Veiling the bosom that, with high, quick swell     Of fear and pity, through it rose and fell.     "Alas!" she cried, "hast thou forgotten quite     The words of Him we spake of yesternight?     Or thy own prophet's, 'Whoso doth endure     And pardon, of eternal life is sure'?     O great and good! be thy revenge alone     Felt in thy mercy to the erring shown;     Let thwarted love and youth their pardon plead,     Who sinned but in intent, and not in deed!"     One moment the strong frame of Akbar shook     With the great storm of passion. Then his look     Softened to her uplifted face, that still     Pleaded more strongly than all words, until     Its pride and anger seemed like overblown,     Spent clouds of thunder left to tell alone     Of strife and overcoming. With bowed head,     And smiting on his bosom: "God," he said,     "Alone is great, and let His holy name     Be honored, even to His servant's shame!     Well spake thy prophet, Miriam, he alone     Who hath not sinned is meet to cast a stone     At such as these, who here their doom await,     Held like myself in the strong grasp of fate.     They sinned through love, as I through love forgive;     Take them beyond my realm, but let them live!"     And, like a chorus to the words of grace,     The ancient Fakir, sitting in his place,     Motionless as an idol and as grim,     In the pavilion Akbar built for him     Under the court-yard trees, (for he was wise,     Knew Menu's laws, and through his close-shut eyes     Saw things far off, and as an open book     Into the thoughts of other men could look,)     Began, half chant, half howling, to rehearse     The fragment of a holy Vedic verse;     And thus it ran: "He who all things forgives     Conquers himself and all things else, and lives     Above the reach of wrong or hate or fear,     Calm as the gods, to whom he is most dear."     Two leagues from Agra still the traveller sees     The tomb of Akbar through its cypress-trees;     And, near at hand, the marble walls that hide     The Christian Begum sleeping at his side.     And o'er her vault of burial (who shall tell     If it be chance alone or miracle?)     The Mission press with tireless hand unrolls     The words of Jesus on its lettered scrolls,     Tells, in all tongues, the tale of mercy o'er,     And bids the guilty, "Go and sin no more!"     It now was dew-fall; very still     The night lay on the lonely hill,     Down which our homeward steps we bent,     And, silent, through great silence went,     Save that the tireless crickets played     Their long, monotonous serenade.     A young moon, at its narrowest,     Curved sharp against the darkening west;     And, momently, the beacon's star,     Slow wheeling o'er its rock afar,     From out the level darkness shot     One instant and again was not.     And then my friend spake quietly     The thought of both: "Yon crescent see!     Like Islam's symbol-moon it gives     Hints of the light whereby it lives     Somewhat of goodness, something true     From sun and spirit shining through     All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark     Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,     Attests the presence everywhere     Of love and providential care.     The faith the old Norse heart confessed     In one dear name, the hopefulest     And tenderest heard from mortal lips     In pangs of birth or death, from ships     Ice-bitten in the winter sea,     Or lisped beside a mother's knee,     The wiser world hath not outgrown,     And the All-Father is our own!