Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again,
“God give thee happy life.” The old man smiled,
“I never am unhappy.”
Tauler laid
His hand upon the stranger’s coarse gray sleeve:
“Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.
Surely man’s days are evil, and his life
Sad as the grave it leads to.” “Nay, my son,
Our times are in God’s hands, and all our days
Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun,
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike
Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
And that which is not, sharing not His life,
Is evil only as devoid of good.
And for the happiness of which I spake,
I find it in submission to His will,
And calm trust in the holy Trinity
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power.”
Silently wondering, for a little space,
Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one
Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought
Which long has followed, whispering through the dark
Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light:
“What if God’s will consign thee hence to Hell?”
“Then,” said the stranger, cheerily, “be it so.
What Hell may be I know not; this I know,—
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord.
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon
His dear humanity; the other, Love,
Clasps his Divinity. So where I go
He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him
Than golden-gated Paradise without.”
Tears sprang in Tauler’s eyes. A sudden light,
Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove
Apart the shadow wherein he had walked
Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man
Went his slow way, until his silver hair
Set like the white moon where the hills of vine
Slope to the Rhine, he bowed his head and said:
“My prayer is answered. God hath sent the man
Long sought, to teach me, by his simple trust,
Wisdom the weary schoolmen never knew.”
So, entering with a changed and cheerful step
The city gates, he saw, far down the street,
A mighty shadow break the light of noon,
Which tracing backward till its airy lines
Hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes
O’er broad façade and lofty pediment,
O’er architrave and frieze and sainted niche,
Up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise
Erwin of Steinbach, dizzily up to where
In the noon-brightness the great Minster’s tower,
Jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown,
Rose like a visible prayer. “Behold!” he said,
“The stranger’s faith made plain before mine eyes.
As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its top,
So, darkness in the pathway of Man’s life
Is but the shadow of God’s providence,
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon;
And what is dark below is light in Heaven.”
THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID
O strong, upwelling prayers of faith,
From inmost founts of life ye start,—
The spirit’s pulse, the vital breath
Of soul and heart!
From pastoral toil, from traffic’s din,
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,
Unheard of man, ye enter in
The ear of God.
Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;
