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THE ETERNITY OF GOD.
O Lord! my heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change;
And life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range:
Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee,
And wakes no echo in Thy mute eternity.
Dear Lord! my heart is sick
Of this perpetual lapsing time,
So slow in grief, in joy so quick,
Yet ever casting shadows so sublime:
Time of all creatures is least like to Thee,
And yet it is our share of Thine eternity.
Oh change and time are storms
For lives so thin and frail as ours;
For change the work of grace deforms
With love that soils, and help that overpowers;
And time is strong, and, like some chafing sea,
It seems to fret the shores of Thine eternity.
Weak, weak, for ever weak!
We cannot hold what we possess;
Youth cannot find, age will not seek,--
Oh weakness is the heart's worst weariness:
But weakest hearts can lift their thoughts to Thee;
It makes us strong to think of Thine eternity.
Thou hadst no youth, great God!
An Unbeginning End Thou art;
Thy glory in itself abode,
And still abides in its own tranquil heart:
No age can heap its outward years on Thee:
Dear God! Thou art Thyself Thine own eternity!
Without an end or bound
Thy life lies all outspread in light;
Our lives feel Thy life all around,
Making our weakness strong, our darkness bright;
Yet is it neither wilderness nor sea,
But the calm gladness of a full eternity.
Oh Thou art very great
To set Thyself so far above!
But we partake of Thine estate,
Established in Thy strength and in Thy love:
That love hath made eternal room for me
In the sweet vastness of its own eternity.
Oh Thou art very meek
To overshade Thy creatures thus!
Thy grandeur is the shade we seek;
To be eternal is Thy use to us:
Ah, Blessed God! what joy it is to me
To lose all thought of self in Thine eternity.
Self-wearied, Lord! I come;
For I have lived my life too fast:
Now that years bring me nearer home
Grace must be slowly used to make it last;
When my heart beats too quick I think of Thee,
And of the leisure of Thy long eternity.
Farewell, vain joys of earth!
Farewell, all love that it not His!
Dear God! be Thou my only mirth,
Thy majesty my single timid bliss!
Oh in the bosom of eternity
Thou dost not weary of Thyself, nor we of Thee!
How easily his words flow, even when he is saying the deepest things!
The poem is full of the elements of the finest mystical metaphysics, and
yet there is no effort in their expression. The tendency to find God
beyond, rather than in our daily human conditions, is discernible; but
only as a tendency.
What a pity that the sects are so slow to become acquainted with the
grand best in each other!
I do not find in Dr. Newman either a depth or a precision equal to that
of Dr. Faber. His earlier poems indicate a less healthy condition of
mind. His Dream of Gerontius is, however, a finer, as more ambitious
poem than any of Faber's. In my judgment there are weak passages in it,
with others of real grandeur. But I am perfectly aware of the difficulty,
almost impossibility, of doing justice to men from some of whose forms of
thought I am greatly repelled, who creep from the sunshine into every
ruined archway, attracted by the brilliance with which the light from its
loophole glows in its caverned gloom, and the hope of discovering within
it the first steps of a stair winding up into the blue heaven. I
apologize for the unavoidable rudeness of a critic who would fain be
honest if he might; and I humbly thank all such as Dr. Newman, whose
verses, revealing their saintship, make us long to be holier men.
Of his, as of Faber's, I have room for no more than one. It was written
off Sardinia.
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