Unendurable

What a world were this; how unendurable its weight, if they whom death had sundered did not meet again!

-       Southey[1]

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Robert Southey (1774-1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called “Lake Poets,” and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame tends to be eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth (see footnote 46) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (see footnote 134), Southey’s verse enjoys enduring popularity. Moreover, he was a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The latter has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film Nelson. He was also a renowned Portuguese and Spanish scholar, translating a number of works of those two languages into English and writing both a History of Brazil (part of his planned History of Portugal which was never completed) and a History of the Peninsular War. Perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the immortal children’s classic, The Story of the Three Bears, the original Goldilocks story, which first saw print in 1834 in Southey’s novel The Doctor.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Our Way through Darkness Leads

O God! Our way through darkness leads,

But Thine is living light;

Teach us to feel that day succeeds

To each slow-wearing night.

Make us to know, though pain and woe

Beset our mortal lives,

That Ill at last in death lies low

And only good survives.

Too long the oppressors’ iron heel

The saintly brow has pressed;

Too oft the tyrant’s murderous steel

Has pierced the guiltless breast.

Yet in our souls the seed shall lie,

Till Thou shalt bid it thrive,

Of steadfast faith that wrong shall die

And only right survive.

We walk in shadow; thickest walls

Do man from man divide.

Our brothers spurn our tenderest calls,

Our holiest aims deride.

Yet though fell craft with fiendish thought

Its subtle web contrives,

Still falsehood’s textures shrink to naught

And only truth survives.

Wrath clouds our sky, war lifts on high

His flag of crimson stain;

Each monstrous birth o’erspreads the earth

In battle’s gory train,

Yet still we trust in God the just,

Still keep our faith alive.

That ‘neath Thine eye all hate shall die,

And only love survive.

-       Horace Greeley,[1] in 1863

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[1] Horace Greeley was born in 1811 in Amherst, New Hampshire, the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary Greeley. He declined a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy and left school at the age of 14. He apprenticed as a printer in Poultney, Vermont, at The Northern Star, moving to New York City in 1831. In 1834 he founded the weekly the New Yorker, which consisted mostly of clippings from other magazines.

In 1836 Greeley married Mary Cheney, an intermittent suffragette. He spent as little time as possible with his wife and would sleep in a boarding house when in New York City rather than be with her. Only two of their seven children survived into adulthood.

Besides editing, Greeley was a politician—he helped form the Liberal Republican Party—and reformer. But it is for journalism that he is best remembered. His New York Tribune was America’s most influential newspaper from the 1840s to the 1870s and established Greeley’s reputation as the greatest editor of his day, according to some.

Greeley used his paper to promote the Whig and Republican parties, as well as antislavery and a host of reforms. Crusading against the corruption of Ulysses S. Grant’s Republican administration, he was the presidential candidate in 1872 of the new Liberal Republican Party. Despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party, he lost in a landslide.

Not long after the election, Greeley’s wife died. He descended into madness and died before the electoral votes could be cast. Greeley died at 6:50 p.m. on Friday, November 29, 1872, in Pleasantville, New York at Dr. George C. S. Choate’s private hospital. He received no electoral votes, with the ones he was to have received being scattered among others. Greeley is buried in New York’s Green-Wood Cemetery.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Our Cheerful Faith

Let neither evil tongues,

Rash judges, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life

Prevail against our spirit, or disturb

Our cheerful faith that all which we behold

Is full of blessing.

Wordsworth[1]

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[1] William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in the Lake District of England, in 1770. His boyhood was full of adventure among the hills, and he says of himself that he showed “a stiff, moody, and violent temper.” He lost his mother when he was 8 and his father at age 13. With the help of his uncles, he and his siblings were well educated and started in life. In 1787 went to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1791. William’s uncles wanted him to enter the Church, but to this he was averse; indeed, his dislike for any regular employment offended his uncles. The beginning of his friendship with Coleridge in 1795 comfirmed in him his resolution to devote himself to poetry; and a legacy of £900 from a friend allowed him to do it, at least temporarily.

He settled with his sister Dorothy at Racedown, Dorsetshire, and shortly afterwards removed to Alfoxden, to be near Coleridge. In time, the two poets planned a joint work, Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and Wordsworth, among other pieces, Tintern Abbey. Published in 1798, it was well received and provided income to allow him to travel. He, Coleridge and Dorothy went to Germany for a year, where he began The Prelude, a poem focusing on Wordsworth’s own mind. He would return to this work regularly over the years, revising it as he felt necessary. Returning from Germany, he settled with Dorothy at Grasmere. Two years later Wordsworth’s circumstances enabled him to marry his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, to whom he had been long attached.  

In 1813 Wordsworth migrated to Rydal Mount, his home for the rest of his life; there a benefactor helped him be appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland, with a salary of £400. He had now come to his own, and was regarded by the great majority of the lovers of poetry as, notwithstanding certain limitations and flaws, a truly great and original poet. In 1843, he succeeded Southey as England’s Poet Laureate. His long, tranquil, and fruitful life ended in 1850. He lies buried in the churchyard of Grasmere. (Source: Poet Seers – poetseers.org)

Love Shall Save Us All

O pilgrim, comes the night so fast?

Let not the dark thy heart appall.

Though loom the shadows vague and fast,

For love shall save us all.

There is no hope but this to see

Through tears that gather fast and fall;

Too great to perish love must be,

And love shall save us all.

Have patience with our loss and pain,

Our troubles’ space of days so small;

We shall not reach our arms in vain,

For love shall save us all.

O pilgrim, but a moment wait,

And we shall hear our darlings call

Beyond death’s mute and awful gate,

And love shall save us all!

-       Thaxter[1]

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[1] Celia Laighton Thaxter was born in 1836 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. When she was young her father, Thomas Laighton, lost a local election. Bitter, he purchased some islands off the coast and took a job as lighthouse keeper on an adjacent island.  For Celia, this was the beginning of a lifetime on and about the Isles of Shoal. Her father eventually opened a guest house at which some of New England’s finest writers stayed. Celia met Hawthorne, Whittier (see footnote 240), and others.  Perhaps it is no surprise she became a poet. Celia’s published collections include: Among the Isles of Shoals (1873); Poems (1871); Driftweed (1878); Poems for Children (1884); and The Cruise of the Mystery, and other Poems (1886). Celia lived on or near the islands all her adult life. She married Levi Lincoln Thaxter in 1851, and died in 1894.  (Sources: Poemhunter.com, Celia Thaxter Timeline by Norma H. Mandel, Ph.D.)

God Knows Best

Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been learned,

And sun and stars forever more have set,

The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,

The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet,

Will flash before us out of life’s dark night,

As stars shine most in deepest tints of blue,

And we shall see how all God’s plans were right,

And how what seemed reproof was love most true.

And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh,

God’s plans go on as best for you and me.

How when we called He heeded not our cry

Because His wisdom to the end could see.

Even as prudent parents disallow,

Too much of sweet to craving babyhood,

So, God, perhaps, is keeping from us now,

Life’s richest thing because it seemeth good.

And if sometimes commingled with life’s wine,

We find the wormwood and rebel and shrink

Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine

Pours out this portion for our lips to drink.

And if some friend we love is lying low,

Where human kisses cannot reach his face,

Oh, do not blame the loving Father so,

But bear your sorrow with obedient grace.

And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath,

Is not the richest gift God sends His friend,

But that sometimes the sable pall of death

Conceals the richest boon His love can send.

If we could push ajar the gates of life,

And stand within and all God’s workings see,

We could interpret all this doubt and strife,

And for each mystery could find the key.

But not to-day.  Then be content, poor heart.

God’s plans, like lilies, pure and white, unfold.

We must not tear the close shut leaves apart,

Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.

And if, through patient toil, we reach that land,

Where tired feet, with sandals loosed, shall rest,

Where we shall clearly know and understand,

I think that we will say, “God Knew the Best.”

            - Mary Louise Riley Smith[1]

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[1] Mary Louise Riley Smith, the author, was born in Brighton, Monroe County, New York in 1842. She was educated at Brockport (New York) Collegiate Institute. In 1869 married Albert Smith, of Springfield, Illinois, with whom she afterward removed to New York City. She published A Gift of Gentians, and other Verses (New York, 1882), and The Inn of Rest (1888). Some of her short poems, notably Tired Mothers, (see p. 258) have been widely popular.  (Source: famousamericans.net)

The Future Kindly Veiled

If I should know the joy 

That lies before me,

If I could open now

The future’s door

And count the treasure waiting there for me,

How dull, how hard, how long

Today’s set of tasks would be!

If I should know what tears

Would blind my eyes,

If I could read just now

The stormy skies

Tomorrow’s dawn may usher in for me,

Today would lose the light

Of its felicity.

I know not—yet I know;

The future’s veil

Is kindly to my eyes.

With joy I hail

Whatever life sends down the path to me

Because I know so well

Both smiles and tears shall be

The best, the very best; if sweet,

If bitter, or if tasteless prove

The portion I must quaff,

Serene I onward move,

Sustained by trust no doubt can mar

That all will priceless prove.

            - Ida Melville Shaw

Immortality

Shall the dead live again?  I cannot prove to you that the dead will rise again.  I cannot prove to you that the sun will rise again.  But I surely believe it will.  And I as surely believe that the dead will rise again.  Blow a little thistle-seed far away, a little thing no bigger than a pin’s point; let it fall on the dark earth in the farthest corner of the world, yet it will in the springtime come forth a lovely flower, perfect in its kind.  And man is surely as much to God as a little thistledown.

-       Joaquin Miller[1]

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[1] Joaquin Miller was born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller in 1837. His father, a Quaker and an Indiana magistrate, relocated the family in 1852 to Oregon. They traveled with two heavy wagons, eight oxen yoked to each, a carriage and two horses. The three-thousand-mile trip took seven months and five days. The family settled in the Willamette Valley where they established a home and farm. Young Cincinnatus soon left his family’s new home and headed to the California gold fields. He worked in a number of mining camps. He reported that he was severely wounded by a Modoc Indian arrow that pierced his face and exited the back of his neck. The injury took a year to heal; he later had little memory of that period of time. This makes his early adulthood hard to trace; the problem is compounded by his tendency to make up colorful stories about himself. He began writing poetry; one poem dealt with the legendary California bandit, Joaquin Murietta. He adopted the bandit’s given name for his own, and went by Joaquin Miller ever after.

Miller left Northern California and traveled to San Francisco, then returned to Oregon. He attended college briefly, taught school, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. But then came the Idaho gold strike, and he once more went prospecting. He returned to Oregon at the beginning of the Civil War with enough gold to build a new home and purchase a newspaper, the Eugene City Democratic Register. In it, he pled for an end to the war, adopting his father’s non-violent creed. His anti-war editorials suppressed, he again turned to mining. He was eventually elected to the position of Judge in a Southern Oregon community.

Miller left Oregon in 1870 and traveled to Europe, where he published his first books, Song of the Sierras and Life among the Modocs. These were successful; when he returned, he was able to purchase 75 acres in the hills above Oakland, California, where he built a home with a full view of the Golden Gate. A last adventure took him to the Klondike during the Alaskan Gold Rush. He came home after six months, exhausted, with thousands of dollars of gold dust, and $6,000 from W. R. Hurst for his Alaskan letters. In his later years Joaquin became known as “The Poet of The Sierras.” A colorful figure, he was well known in California literary and social circles. Six volumes of his collected poems and other writing were published in 1909. He died 1913. (Source: Central California Poetry Journal, Vol. 96, No. 1.)

God's Unchanging Love

Who rests on God’s unchanging love,

Builds on the rocks that naught can move.

Newmark

Solace

I’m lonely, oh so lonely 

For a message just to say

You still are thinking of me,

Though so very far away;

And my heart is aching, aching

When I gaze into the blue,

For in every fret and trouble,

My thoughts still turn to you.

The autumn winds are sighing,

As the leaves of gold and red

Come fluttering down about us,

And we know that summer’s dead.

The short sweet summer’s vanished,

With its pleasure and its pain,

And winter storms will chill us,

Ere the flowers bloom again.

And so along life’s pathway,

We pluck the fairest flowers,

And revel in their sweetness,

Nor heed the passing hours.

Then comes a storm of sorrow,

And shadows dark and grey;

Not all of life’s allurements

Can chase the gloom away.

But a door is always waiting,

Beyond this world of sin,

And we sometimes catch a glimmer

Of the wondrous light within.

Some day the door will open,

Far across the Great Divide,

And we’ll meet the dear ones waiting

Safe on the other side.

Oh then what joy, what rapture,

When the shadows fade away,

And we leave the gloom and darkness,

For a land of perfect day.

When our barque is safely anchored

Beyond the rolling tide,

Never more to breast the billows,

Then, we will be satisfied.

Beth

Faith

Better trust all and be deceived,

And weep that trust and that deceiving,

Than doubt one heart that, if believed,

Had blessed one’s life with true believing.

O, in this mocking world too fast

The doubting fiend o’ertakes our youth!

Better be cheated to the last

Than lose the blessed hope of truth.

-       Fanny Kemble[1]

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[1] Frances Anne Kemble was born in 1809 into the first family of the British stage. After her debut as Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, she became an icon. She found international fame on her tour of the East Coast of the United States in the fall of 1832. On tour she met Pierce Mease Butler, a wealthy plantation owner; they fell in love and married in 1834. Frances left acting, but hoped to pursue her literary interests. She became a best-selling author when her Journal of Frances Anne Butler appeared in 1835, and the book scandalized American readers with her candid assessments of her adopted country.

In December 1838 Butler took Frances and their two young daughters to his vast holdings on St. Simons and Butler’s islands. She was morally opposed to slavery, and he hoped a visit would rid her of this. It didn’t work: during the winter of 1838-39, Frances’ diary became an impassioned eyewitness account of the wrongs of slavery. 

Her battles with her husband over harsh treatment of slaves contributed to a permanent impasse, followed by a marital separation in 1845 and a divorce in 1849. Although abolitionists encouraged Frances to publish the vivid diary of her days in Georgia, she resisted, so as not to antagonize Butler, who maintained custody of their two daughters. But during the Civil War, she became alarmed about foreign attitudes toward the Confederacy and published her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 in England. It caused a sensation. Frances later moved to Philadelphia, where she supported herself by touring the United States and Europe with her Shakespeare readings. She continued to travel until her death in 1893, in London.  (Source: New Georgia Encyclopedia)

No More Sea

How oft, gazing upwards,

My soul yearns to be

In that far world of angels,

Where is “No more sea”!

There the storm threats no longer,

There the passions lie still;

There the meek wings are folded,

Waiting God’s holy will.

There from grief and temptation

The soul shall be free,

In that calm world of angels

Where is “No more sea.”

The Potter and the Clay

Behold, as clay is in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel!

Jer., xviii, 6.

Our eyes are held that we may not see 

The love and service we owe to thee;

Our will is warped that we may not do

The deeds of those that to Thee are true;

We blindly grope on a thorn-strewn road,

With fear, not love, for our only goad.

But fashion us, Lord, in Thine own good way;

For Thou art the Potter and we the clay!

We give no thought to the shape or size:

Thy hands are skilled and Thy judgments wise;

We ask Thee not what may be our worth—

A vase of beauty or a jar of earth;

Though the wheel turn slow or the wheel turn fast,

Thy hand shall guide till it stops at last.

Then fashion us, Lord, in Thine own good way;

For Thou art the Potter and we the clay.

Marie

Ways

“To some—unclouded skies and sunny days,

To some—grey weather and laborious ways,

To all—Thy grace;

To those who fall—Thy tenderness.”

John Oxenham

Reasoning

“Why do you trust in God?” a well-known skeptic once asked an aged Christian.  “And what reason have you for believing that God exists?”

The old man’s reply was a follows:

“I am getting an old man now.  For over sixty years I have seen the sun rise in the east and set in the west; every night the Pole-star looks down at me from the heavens; summer and winter have never failed.  I look around on man’s work, and what do I see?  Nothing but finish, change, and decay.  I cannot therefore but believe in a God whose power is always the same.  He who is the same yesterday, today, and forever!”

All our efforts in any direction have their limits, and come to an end, however wonderful they may seem to us, but God’s power is limitless and eternal.

Faith

Let us be sure that earth shows no fairer sight than the old man whose worn-out brain and nerves make it painful, and perhaps impossible, to produce fresh thought himself: but who can yet welcome smilingly and joyfully the fresh thought of others; who keeps unwearied his faith in God’s government of the universe, in God’s continual education of the human race; who draws around him the young and the sanguine, not merely to check their rashness by his wise cautions, but to inspirit their sloth by the memories of his first victories; who hands over without envy or repining, the things of truth to younger runners than himself, and sits contented by, bidding the new generation God speed along the paths untrodden by him, but seen afar off in faith.

Eastern Wisdom

Since Faith at the Last Great Judgment can make my reckoning light,

Shall I fear if Faith requireth, to lose my life outright?

So the world is now my quarry and the hunter who hunts am I,

Though I was once the quarry, in the days that are long gone by.

Though others it hunt and capture, I stand from its dangers clear,

My soul is higher than fortune; then why should I Fortune fear?

-       Nasir-I-Khusraw[1]

O far-seeing falcon, whose seat is in the tree of Paradise—this corner of Labor-town is not thy rest.

-       Hafiz[2]

Through the lofty vault of Ether,

With wings of obedience I

One day shall soar to the heavens as

The sky-lark soars to the sky.

-       Nasir-I-Khusraw

The world is a book full of knowledge and justice, the binder of which book is Destiny, another binding the beginning and the end: The stitching of it is the law, and the leaves are the religious persuasions.

-       The Dabistan[3]

Let understanding marvel as it may, where men see clouds, on the ninth heaven I gaze, and see the throne of God.

-       Mahmoud

Life is a pledge of friendship from our Maker: Give me the pledge and take the pledge who will.

-       Akhlag-I-Jalali[4]

Increase in goodness as long as thou art here, that when thou departest, in that thou mayest still be joyful.

Firdawsi[5]

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[1] Abu Mo’in Hamid al-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw was born in 1004 in Qobadiyan in the district of Marv, in the eastern Persian province of Khurasan. He enjoyed high positions in the administrative ranks of the Saljuq court, including in the revenue department. Based on the quality of his writings, it is obvious he received an excellent education in the sciences, literatures and philosophies of his time, including the study of Greek and Neoplatonic philosophy. He examined the doctrines of the different Islamic schools and was not satisfied until he found and understood the Ismaili faith. From this event of conversion, he embarked on his journey, during which time he spent three years in the Ismaili court in Cairo of the Fatimid caliph, al-Mustansir (1029-1094). 

The Fatimid dynasty (909-1171) aimed at creating an Islamic state based on Ismaili tenets, and thus presented a direct theological and military challenge to the Sunni ‘Abbasid caliphate based in Baghdad. He left Cairo as the head of Ismaili missionary activities in his home province of Khurasan. When he died is uncertain. At some point, he was forced by the Sunni authorities to flee for his life; he lived the rest of his days in exile in the Pamir Mountains of Badakhshan, located in today’s Tajikistan and Afghanistan. (Source: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – iep.utm.edu)

[2] Hafiz is the pen name of Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz-s Shirazi. He was born in 1320 in Shiraz, Persia, son of Baha-ud-Din. As a young man, he memorized the Koran by hearing his father recite it; his pen-name reflects this accomplishment. Hafiz also memorized many of the works of his hero, Saadi (see footnote 181), the famous author and teacher from Shiraz, who had died thirty years before he was born. Hafiz’ father was a coal merchant; he sickened and died while the boy was in his late teens. This left Hafiz and his mother in serious debt. They went to live with his uncle Saadi, who had been named for the boy’s hero. Hafiz dropped out of school to work in a drapery shop, and later, in a bakery.

In his early thirties Hafiz became a poet of the court of Abu Ishak. He gained much fame and influence in Shiraz, and he became a teacher of Koranic studies at the college. But when he was 33, Mubariz Muzaffar captured Shiraz and ousted Hafiz from his position. Hafiz wrote protest poems. Five years later, the new tyrant was overthrown by his own son Shah Shuja. Hafiz regained his spot at the college. As the years went by, Hafiz began falling out of favor with Shah Shuja, and eventually fled Shiraz for his safety. He went into self-imposed exile in Isfahan, in central Persia. After a decade or so, Shah Shuja, invited him to return to Shiraz. He was re-instated to his post at the College. Hafiz composed over 5,000 poems in his lifetime, but few were written down. The Gift, which has been translated into English by Daniel Ladinsky, is one of his better-known works.

When he was 21, still working at the bakery, Hafiz delivered bread to a wealthy quarter of town and saw Shakh-e Nabat, a young woman of incredible beauty. Many of his poems are addressed to her. He longed to marry her, but it was not to be. Not only was he poor, physically unattractive and small, but she was promised to one of the city’s princes. In pursuit of reaching his beloved, Hafiz kept a forty day and night vigil at the tomb of Baba Kuhi. At the end of this vigil, he was visited by the Angel Gabriel, who told him that to achieve perfection, he should become a disciple of Attar of Shiraz, which he did. While still in his twenties, Hafiz married and became a father, though he continued to extol the virtues of Shakh-e Nabat.

At age 60, longing to be united with his Creator, Hafiz began a forty day and night vigil by sitting in a circle that he had drawn himself. He had a vision in which he finally achieved Cosmic Consciousness. He continued to write and teach, and died at the age of 69.  (Source: poetseers.org)

[3] This is a 17^th century Persian text surveying the many different kinds of religious experience in Asia, including Majism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism and many smaller sects. It is thought to have been written by Muhammad Muhsin, also known as Fani. It was first translated into English in 1843 as Religious Doctrines by Sir William Jones.

[4] The Akhlaq-e Jalali (Jalalian Ethics) is a 15^th century treatise by Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn As’ad al-Dawani, first translated into English in 1839 by W. F. Thompson. Al-Dawani was born near Kazarun, southern Iran, in the village of Davan in 1426. He first studied there with his father before going to Shiraz to further and complete his education in philosophy, theology and law. As other leading religious scholars of his time and place, he was directly caught up in the turbulent politics of Iran in the second half of the fifteenth century. He was inducted into various religious offices, and many of his works were dedicated to Aq Qoyunlu and other Timurid rulers and princes. He also achieved fame as a teacher in the Begum madrasa (Dar al-Aytam) in Shiraz. The question of his religious allegiance, whether Sunni or Shi’i (he wrote theological works of both persuasions), has always been the subject of debate and of many fanciful stories, but it may be of comparatively slight significance given the situation in the Iran of his time, which was marked by a Sunnism with a strong Shi’i colouring. He died in 1502 near Kazarun, a year or so before the Safavid capture of Shiraz, and is buried in his home town.

[5] Firdawsi is the pen-name of Persian poet Abu Ol-Qasem Mansur (ca 935-1020), about whom little factual information is known. He is credited with writing Shah-nameh (Book of Kings), an epic of 60,000 couplets that tells the story of the kings of Persia until the seventh century.  (Source: hjconfer.home.att.net)