He was wont to creep and stumble, with a slow, uncertain pace,

And a supplicating doubt o'er all his hard unbending face;

And our mirth would make him scornful, and our pity made him wince,

He was sharp too with his reasons, and his deep, inveterate sneer
Mocked the highest and divinest without reverence or fear;
And our pious saws and customs, he would laugh at them, and call
The old lace that did embroider the hypocrisy of all.

For the world seemed out of joint to him, and rotten to the core,
With Gods and creeds once credited, but credible no more;
And duties high, heroic, that once were bravely done;
But for action, we had babbling only now beneath the sun.

And there was nothing sacred in the universe to him-
No lights of awe and wonder-no temple fitly dim;
Ever scornfully he reasoned, ever battled with his lot,
And he rent, not understanding, the fine sanctities of thought.

But the blind old man is altered to a cheerful hopefulness,
And now serenest thought and joy are mantling in his face;
At one with his own spirit, at one with all his kind,

At one with God's great universe-he sees though he is blind.

And it's all that sweet child's doing; see them at the lattice there,
How his fingers steal amid the long brown clusters of her hair;
And she looks up with her thoughtful eyes of lustrous loving blue,
And tells him of the rosebuds that are peeping into view.

They say he found her one night, humming o'er a quiet tune,
As he walked in mournful sadness beneath the tranquil moon,
Yet sporting in his sorrow, mourning with a scornful mirth,
Like a blind old Samson grappling with the pillars of the earth.

And she came upon him gently, as an angel from the Lord,
And she led him with a loving hand, and with a pious word;

And she fringed the dark clouds of his soul with lights of heaven's own grace, And she breathed into his life a breath of tranquil hopefulness.

And he's no more sharp with reasons; thought sits calmly on his brow,
And the dew upon his thoughts is not changed to hoar-frost now;

And he plays such rare sweet music with a natural pathos low;
There is no sorrow in it, yet 'twill make your tears to flow.

For he's full of all bird-singing, and the cheery ring of bells,

The rain that drizzles on the leaves, the dripping sound of wells,
And the bearded barley's rustling, and the sound of winds and brooks,
That in the quiet midnight floats about the woodland nooks,

And the old ocean-murmurs, and all the hum of bees,

And varied modulations of the many-sounding trees.

These tune his heart to melodies, that lighten all its load;

Yet their gladness hath a sadness, though it speak to him of God.

And he knows all shapes of flowers: the heath, the fox-glove with its bells,
The palmy fern's green elegance, fanned in soft woodland smells;
The milkwort on the mossy turf his nice-touch fingers trace,

And it's all that sweet child's doing: as they saunter by the brook, '
If they be not singing by the way, she reads the blessed book;
Reads the story of the sorrow of the man that loved us all,
Till the eyes that cannot see her let the tears in gladness fall.

O, a blessed work is thine, fair child; and even so we find,
When we, bedridden with sick thoughts, are wandering in our mind
From the simple truth of nature, how blissful is the calm,

When Faith holds up the aching head, and presses with her palm.

That's the key-note of existence; the right tone is caught at length ;
Cometh Faith upon the soul, and we go on in love and strength;
We go on, with surest footstep, by the dizziest brinks of thought,
And in its deep abysses see the God whom we had sought.

We were sometime dark and dreary; we were sometime wroth and proud ;
Warring with our fate defiant; scornful of the vacant crowd;
Thoughtful of the seeming discords, and the impotence of will;
And questioning the Universe for meanings hard and ill.

Cometh Faith upon the spirit, and the spirit is serene,
Seeing beauty in the duty, and God where these are seen,—
God in every path of duty, beaming gracious from above,
And clothing every sorrow with the garment of His love.

And the dark cloud is uplifted, and the mists of doubt grow thin,
Leaving drops of dew behind them, as the light comes breaking in ;
And the surges of the passion into quiet slumbers fall,

And the discords do but hint a grander harmony through all.

For around the man of sorrows all the sorrows of our lot

Find their law and light in Him, whose life is our divinest thought;
And the Infinite, the Dreaded, draws nigh to thee and me

In that sacrament of sorrow-we are blind and yet we see.

For if the way of man here is a way of grief and loss,

Even so the way of Godhead was upon the bitter cross,—

Upon the bitter cross, and along a tearful story,

Till the wreath of thorns became the crown of heaven's imperial glory.

So the sorrow and the sacrifice, whereat we do repine,

Are but symbols of the kinship 'twixt the human and divine

But the law of highest being and of highest honour given;

For the wreath of cruel thorns is now the empire crown of heaven.

Rest thee on that faith divine, and all the history of man
Round its thread will crystallize in order of a glorious plan;
For the grief is still divinest, and our strains of deepest gladness
Show their kindred by their trembling ever on the verge of sadness.

Rest thee on that holy faith, and all the misty mountain tops,

Where thy thoughts were cold and cloudy, shall beam forth with radiant hopes And the harmony of all things, never uttered into ears,

'Tis the shallow stream that babbles-'tis in shallows of the sea
Where its ineffectual labours for a mighty utterance be;

All the spoken truth is ripple,-surge upon the shore of Death;
There is but a silent swell amid the depths of love and faith.

But be still, and hear the Godhead how His solemn footsteps fall
In the story of the sorrow of the Man who loved us all;
Be still, and let Him lead thee along the brink of awe,
Where the mystery of sorrow solves the mystery of Law.

And the mournfulness and scornfulness will haply melt away,

They were frost-work on your windows, and they dimm'd the light of day;
And you took their phantom pictures for the scenery of earth,
And never saw in truth the world that made your mournful mirth.

Only let the Heaven-child, Jesus, lead thee meekly on the path
Through thy sorrows, strewn with blossoms, like a kindly after-math,
And for reasons sharp and bitter quiet thoughts will rise in thee,
As when light, instead of lightning, gleams upon the earth and sea.

And the world will murmur sweetly many songs into thine ear,
From the harvest and the vintage, as their gladness crowns the year;
From the laughter of the children, glancing lightsome as life's foam;
From the sabbath of the weary, and the sanctities of home;

Yea, the sickness and the sorrows, and the mourner's bitter grief,
Will have strains of holy meaning, notes of infinite relief,
Whispering of the love and wisdom that are in a Father's rod;
And their sadness will have gladness speaking thus to thee of God.

And if He give thee waters of sorrow to thy fate,

He will give them songs to murmur, though but half articulate,
Like the brooks that murmur pensive, and you know not what they say,
But the grass and flowers are brightest where they sing along their way.

Thus in thoughtful contemplation of the full-orbed life divine,
Shall the fragmentary reason find the Law that doth combine
All the seeming antinomies of the infinite decree

That has linked the highest being with the highest misery.

Ye that dwell among your reasons, what is that ye call a God

But the lengthening shadow of yourselves that falls upon your road?
The shadow of a Self supreme, that orders all our fate,
Sitting bland in His complaisance 'mid the ruins desolate !

O your subtle logic-bridges, spanning over the abyss.
From the finite with its sadness to the Infinite of bliss!
You would find out God by logic, lying far from us, serene,
In a weighty proposition, with a hundred links between!

And you send your thoughts on every side in search of Him forsooth!
Speeding over the broad Universe to find the only truth

That lies at your hand for ever. Get thee eye-salve, man, and pray :

And it's all that sweet child's doing: as they saunter by the brook,'
If they be not singing by the way, she reads the blessed book;
Reads the story of the sorrow of the man that loved us all,
Till the eyes that cannot see her let the tears in gladness fall.

O, a blessed work is thine, fair child; and even so we find,
When we, bedridden with sick thoughts, are wandering in our mind
From the simple truth of nature, how blissful is the calm,
When Faith holds up the aching head, and presses with her palm.

That's the key-note of existence; the right tone is caught at length;
Cometh Faith upon the soul, and we go on in love and strength;
We go on, with surest footstep, by the dizziest brinks of thought,
And in its deep abysses see the God whom we had sought.

We were sometime dark and dreary; we were sometime wroth and proud;
Warring with our fate defiant; scornful of the vacant crowd;
Thoughtful of the seeming discords, and the impotence of will;
And questioning the Universe for meanings hard and ill.

Cometh Faith upon the spirit, and the spirit is serene,
Seeing beauty in the duty, and God where these are seen,-
God in every path of duty, beaming gracious from above,
And clothing every sorrow with the garment of His love.

And the dark cloud is uplifted, and the mists of doubt grow thin,
Leaving drops of dew behind them, as the light comes breaking in ;
And the surges of the passion into quiet slumbers fall,
And the discords do but hint a grander harmony through all.

For around the man of sorrows all the sorrows of our lot

Find their law and light in Him, whose life is our divinest thought ;
And the Infinite, the Dreaded, draws nigh to thee and me

In that sacrament of sorrow-we are blind and yet we see.

For if the way of man here is a way of grief and loss,

Even so the way of Godhead was upon the bitter cross,

Upon the bitter cross, and along a tearful story,

Till the wreath of thorns became the crown of heaven's imperial glory.

So the sorrow and the sacrifice, whereat we do repine,

Are but symbols of the kinship 'twixt the human and divine

But the law of highest being and of highest honour given;

For the wreath of cruel thorns is now the empire crown of heaven.

Rest thee on that faith divine, and all the history of man
Round its thread will crystallize in order of a glorious plan;
For the grief is still divinest, and our strains of deepest gladness
Show their kindred by their trembling ever on the verge of sadness.

Rest thee on that holy faith, and all the misty mountain tops,

Where thy thoughts were cold and cloudy, shall beam forth with radiant hopes And the harmony of all things, never uttered into ears,