The Meeting

The elder folks shook hands at last,     Down seat by seat the signal passed.     To simple ways like ours unused,     Half solemnized and half amused,     With long-drawn breath and shrug, my guest     His sense of glad relief expressed.     Outside, the hills lay warm in sun;     The cattle in the meadow-run     Stood half-leg deep; a single bird     The green repose above us stirred.     "What part or lot have you," he said,     "In these dull rites of drowsy-head?     Is silence worship? Seek it where     It soothes with dreams the summer air,     Not in this close and rude-benched hall,     But where soft lights and shadows fall,     And all the slow, sleep-walking hours     Glide soundless over grass and flowers!     From time and place and form apart,     Its holy ground the human heart,     Nor ritual-bound nor templeward     Walks the free spirit of the Lord!     Our common Master did not pen     His followers up from other men;     His service liberty indeed,     He built no church, He framed no creed;     But while the saintly Pharisee     Made broader his phylactery,     As from the synagogue was seen     The dusty-sandalled Nazarene     Through ripening cornfields lead the way     Upon the awful Sabbath day,     His sermons were the healthful talk     That shorter made the mountain-walk,     His wayside texts were flowers and birds,     Where mingled with His gracious words     The rustle of the tamarisk-tree     And ripple-wash of Galilee."     "Thy words are well, O friend," I said;     "Unmeasured and unlimited,     With noiseless slide of stone to stone,     The mystic Church of God has grown.     Invisible and silent stands     The temple never made with hands,     Unheard the voices still and small     Of its unseen confessional.     He needs no special place of prayer     Whose hearing ear is everywhere;     He brings not back the childish days     That ringed the earth with stones of praise,     Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid     The plinths of Phil e's colonnade.     Still less He owns the selfish good     And sickly growth of solitude,     The worthless grace that, out of sight,     Flowers in the desert anchorite;     Dissevered from the suffering whole,     Love hath no power to save a soul.     Not out of Self, the origin     And native air and soil of sin,     The living waters spring and flow,     The trees with leaves of healing grow.     "Dream not, O friend, because I seek     This quiet shelter twice a week,     I better deem its pine-laid floor     Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore;     But nature is not solitude     She crowds us with her thronging wood;     Her many hands reach out to us,     Her many tongues are garrulous;     Perpetual riddles of surprise     She offers to our ears and eyes;     She will not leave our senses still,     But drags them captive at her will     And, making earth too great for heaven,     She hides the Giver in the given.     "And so, I find it well to come     For deeper rest to this still room,     For here the habit of the soul     Feels less the outer world's control;     The strength of mutual purpose pleads     More earnestly our common needs;     And from the silence multiplied     By these still forms on either side,     The world that time and sense have known     Falls off and leaves us God alone.     "Yet rarely through the charmed repose     Unmixed the stream of motive flows,     A flavor of its many springs,     The tints of earth and sky it brings;     In the still waters needs must be     Some shade of human sympathy;     And here, in its accustomed place,     I look on memory's dearest face;     The blind by-sitter guesseth not     What shadow haunts that vacant spot;     No eyes save mine alone can see     The love wherewith it welcomes me!     And still, with those alone my kin,     In doubt and weakness, want and sin,     I bow my head, my heart I bare     As when that face was living there,     And strive (too oft, alas! in vain)     The peace of simple trust to gain,     Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay     The idols of my heart away.     "Welcome the silence all unbroken,     Nor less the words of fitness spoken,     Such golden words as hers for whom     Our autumn flowers have just made room;     Whose hopeful utterance through and through     The freshness of the morning blew;     Who loved not less the earth that light     Fell on it from the heavens in sight,     But saw in all fair forms more fair     The Eternal beauty mirrored there.     Whose eighty years but added grace     And saintlier meaning to her face,     The look of one who bore away     Glad tidings from the hills of day,     While all our hearts went forth to meet     The coming of her beautiful feet!     Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread     Is in the paths where Jesus led;     Who dreams her childhood's Sabbath dream     By Jordan's willow-shaded stream,     And, of the hymns of hope and faith,     Sung by the monks of Nazareth,     Hears pious echoes, in the call     To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall,     Repeating where His works were wrought     The lesson that her Master taught,     Of whom an elder Sibyl gave,     The prophecies of Cuma 's cave.     "I ask no organ's soulless breath     To drone the themes of life and death,     No altar candle-lit by day,     No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play,     No cool philosophy to teach     Its bland audacities of speech     To double-tasked idolaters     Themselves their gods and worshippers,     No pulpit hammered by the fist     Of loud-asserting dogmatist,     Who borrows for the Hand of love     The smoking thunderbolts of Jove.     I know how well the fathers taught,     What work the later schoolmen wrought;     I reverence old-time faith and men,     But God is near us now as then;     His force of love is still unspent,     His hate of sin as imminent;     And still the measure of our needs     Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds;     The manna gathered yesterday     Already savors of decay;     Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown     Question us now from star and stone;     Too little or too much we know,     And sight is swift and faith is slow;     The power is lost to self-deceive     With shallow forms of make-believe.     W e walk at high noon, and the bells     Call to a thousand oracles,     But the sound deafens, and the light     Is stronger than our dazzled sight;     The letters of the sacred Book     Glimmer and swim beneath our look;     Still struggles in the Age's breast     With deepening agony of quest     The old entreaty: 'Art thou He,     Or look we for the Christ to be?'     "God should be most where man is least     So, where is neither church nor priest,     And never rag of form or creed     To clothe the nakedness of need,     Where farmer-folk in silence meet,     I turn my bell-unsummoned feet;'     I lay the critic's glass aside,     I tread upon my lettered pride,     And, lowest-seated, testify     To the oneness of humanity;     Confess the universal want,     And share whatever Heaven may grant.     He findeth not who seeks his own,     The soul is lost that's saved alone.     Not on one favored forehead fell     Of old the fire-tongued miracle,     But flamed o'er all the thronging host     The baptism of the Holy Ghost;     Heart answers heart: in one desire     The blending lines of prayer aspire;     'Where, in my name, meet two or three,'     Our Lord hath said, 'I there will be!'     "So sometimes comes to soul and sense     The feeling which is evidence     That very near about us lies     The realm of spiritual mysteries.     The sphere of the supernal powers     Impinges on this world of ours.     The low and dark horizon lifts,     To light the scenic terror shifts;     The breath of a diviner air     Blows down the answer of a prayer     That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt     A great compassion clasps about,     And law and goodness, love and force,     Are wedded fast beyond divorce.     Then duty leaves to love its task,     The beggar Self forgets to ask;     With smile of trust and folded hands,     The passive soul in waiting stands     To feel, as flowers the sun and dew,     The One true Life its own renew.     "So, to the calmly gathered thought     The innermost of truth is taught,     The mystery dimly understood,     That love of God is love of good,     And, chiefly, its divinest trace     In Him of Nazareth's holy face;     That to be saved is only this,     Salvation from our selfishness,     From more than elemental fire,     The soul's unsanetified desire,     From sin itself, and not the pain     That warns us of its chafing chain;     That worship's deeper meaning lies     In mercy, and not sacrifice,     Not proud humilities of sense     And posturing of penitence,     But love's unforced obedience;     That Book and Church and Day are given     For man, not God, for earth, not heaven,     The blessed means to holiest ends,     Not masters, but benignant friends;     That the dear Christ dwells not afar,     The king of some remoter star,     Listening, at times, with flattered ear     To homage wrung from selfish fear,     But here, amidst the poor and blind,     The bound and suffering of our kind,     In works we do, in prayers we pray,     Life of our life, He lives to-day.