J. G. Holland

“ Grace.
I thought you convert to his sophistry.
It makes no difference to him, you know,
Whether I plague or please.
Ruth.
It does to you.
Israel.
There, children! No more bitter words like those!
I do not understand them; they awake
A sad uneasiness within my heart.
I found but Christian meaning in the hymn;
Aye, I could say amen to every line,
As to the breathings of my own poor prayer.
But let us talk no more. I'll to my bed.
Good-night, my children! Happy thoughts be yours
Till sleep arrive—then happy dreams till dawn! ”

“ And the deep secret of enjoyment won,—
Why pray for death?
Edward.
Do you not know me, Mary?
I am afraid to live, for I am weak.
I've found a treasure only life can steal;
I've won a jewel only death will keep.
In such a heart as mine, the priceless pearl
Would not be safe. That which I would not take
When health was with me,—which I spurned away
So long as I had power to sin, I fear
Would be surrendered with that power's return
And the temptation to its exercise.
For soul like mine, diseased in every part,
There is but one condition in which grace
May give it service. ”

“ Grace.
Oh, speak not thus! The thought is terrible.
He is my all; and yet, it sickens me
To think that he will grow to be a man.
If he were not a boy!
Mary.
Were not a boy?
That wakens other thoughts. Thank God for that!
To be a man, if aught, is privilege
Precious and peerless. While I bide content
The modest lot of woman, all my soul
Gives truest manhood humblest reverence.
It is a great and god-like thing to do!
'Tis a great thing, I think, to be a man.
Man fells the forests, plows and tills the fields,
And heaps the granaries that feed the world. ”

“ Counseled and cheered me, prayed with me, and then
Led me with careful hand into the light,
Was he now bending over you in tears—
David, my brother!
Edward.
Blessed be his name!
Brother by every law, above—below!
Grace.
[Pale and trembling,]
David? My husband? Did I hear aright?
You are not jesting! Sure you would not jest
At such a juncture! Speak, my husband, speak!
Is this a plot to cheat a dying man,
Or cheat a wife who, if it be no plot,
Is worthy death? What can you mean by this?
Mary.
Not more nor less than my true words convey.
Grace. ”

“ Pierced thick by pilgrim staves, that Faith may lie
Upon its back, and only gaze on Heaven.
I would not banish evil if I could;
Nor would I be so deep in love with joy
As to seek for it in forgetfulness,
Through faith or fear.
Ruth.
Teach me the better way,
And every expiration from my lips
Shall be a grateful blessing on your head;
And in the coming world I'll seek the side
Of no more gracious angel than the man
Who gives me brotherhood by leading me
Home with himself to heaven. ”

“ The theater of evil; for no law
Declared of God from all eternity
Can live a moment save by lease of pain.
Law cannot live, e'en in God's inmost thought,
Save by the side of evil. What were law
But a weak jest without its penalty?
Never a law was born that did not fly
Forth from the bosom of Omnipotence
Matched, wing-and-wing, with evil and with good,
Avenger and rewarder—both of God.
Ruth.
I face your thought and give it audience;
But I cannot embrace it till it come
With some of truth's credentials in its hands—
The fruits of gracious ministries. ”

“ Is the temptation of the soul to sin,
Resisted, and re-conquered, evermore.
Ruth.
I am content; and now that I have caught
Bright glimpses of the outlines of your scheme,
As of a landscape, graded to the sky,
And seen through trees while passing, I desire
No vision further till I make survey
In some good time when I may come alone,
And drink its beauty and its blessedness.
I've been forgetful in my earnestness,
And wearied everyone with talk. These boys
Are restive grown, or nodding in their chairs,
And older heads are set, as if for sleep. ”

“ In Trust's strong citadel, quaked all night long,
As tower and bastion fell before the rush
Of fierce convictions; and the tumbling walls
Boomed with dull throbs of ruin through my brain.
And there were palaces that leaned on this—
Castles of air, in long and glittering lines,
Which melted into air, and pierced the blue
That marks the star-strewn vault of heaven;—all fell,
With a faint crash like that which scares the soul
When dissolution shivers through a dream
Smitten by nightmare,—fell and faded all
To utter nothingness ”

“ Grace.
I am ashamed,—
In truth I am ashamed—to tell you all.
You will not laugh at me?
Mary.
I laugh at you?
Grace.
Forgive me, Mary, for my heart is weak;
Distrustful of itself and all the world.
Ah, well! To what strange issues leads our life!
It seems but yesterday that you were brought
To this old house, an orphaned little girl,
Whose large shy eyes, pale cheeks, and shrinking ways
Filled all our hearts with wonder, as we stood
And stared at you, until your heart o'erfilled
With the oppressive strangeness, and you wept. ”

“ The blush that lights the modest maiden's cheeks;
And toss the locks of children at their play.
Silence is vocal if we listen well;
And Life and Being sing in dullest ears
From morn to night, from night to morn again,
With fine articulations; but when God
Disturbs the soul with terror, or inspires
With a great joy, the words of Doubt and Faith
Sound quick and sharp like drops on forest leaves ”

“ He was debauched, and dead in love with sin;—
That love of me had made him what I loved,—
That I could only hold him till the wave
Of some overwhelming impulse should sweep in,
To lift his feet and bear him from my arms.
I felt that morn, when he went trembling forth,
With bloodshot eyes and forehead hot with woe,
That henceforth strife would be 'twixt Hell and me—
The odds against me—for my husband's soul.
Grace.
Poor dove! Poor Mary! Have you suffered thus?
You had not even pride to keep you up. ”

“ A moment more, and we should all have gone
Down into dreamland with the babe! Ah, well!
There is no end of wonders.
Ruth.
None, indeed!
When lazy poets who have gorged themselves,
And cannot keep awake, make the attempt
To shift the burden of their drowsiness,
And charge a girl with what they owe to greed.
David.
At your old tricks again! No sleep induced
By song of yours, or any other bird's,
Can linger long when you begin to talk.
Grace, box your sister's ears for me, and save
The trouble of my rising.
Ruth.
[Advancing and kneeling by the side of Grace.] ”

“ Who never sows a good the second time
Till the torn bosom of the graceless soil
Is ready for the seed.
Grace.
Oh, could you know
The anguish of my heart, you would not chide!
If I repine, it is because my lot
Is not the blessed thing it seems to you.
O Mary! Could you know! Could you but know!
Mary.
Then why not tell me all? You know me, love.
And know that secrets make their graves with me.
So, tell me all; for I do promise you
Such sympathy as God through suffering
Has given me power to grant to such as you. ”

“ All men, however good, are weak, I thought;
And if I can arrest no beam of love
By right of nature or by leave of law,
I'll stain the glass! And the last words I said,
As I lay down upon my bed to dream,
Were those four words of sin: "I'll stain the glass!"
Grace.
Mary, I cannot hear you more; your tale,
So bitter and so passing pitiful
I have forgotten tears, and feel my eyes
Burn dry and hot with looking at your face,
Now gathers blackness, and grows horrible. ”

“ Ruth.
Father, you fail to understand the case,
And do me wrong. David has threatened me
With an assault that proves intent to kill;
And here's my sister Grace, his wedded wife,
Who'll take her oath, that just a year ago
He entered into bonds to keep the peace
Toward me and womankind.
David.
I'm quite asleep.
Israel.
We'll all agree, then, to pronounce it quits.
Ruth.
Till he awake again, of course. I trust
I have sufficient gallantry to grant
A nap between encounters, to a foe
With odds against him. ”

“ And Blue Beard teach them how to love
The sweet Fatima.
They hate his crimes, and it is well;
They pity those who died;
Their sense of justice when he fell
Was satisfied.
No fierce revenges are the fruit
Of their just indignation;
They sit in judgment on the brute,
And condemnation;
And turn to her, his rescued wife,
Her deeds so kind and human,
And love the beauty of her life,
And bless the woman.
Ruth.
That is the way I supposed you would twist it;
And now that the boys are disposed of,
And the moral so handsomely closed off,
What do you say of the girl? ”

“ The room grows dim, and silently and soft
The veil is dropping 'twixt my eyes and yours,
Which soon will hide me from you—you from me.
Only one hand is warm; it rests in yours,
Whose full, sweet pulses throb along my arm,
So that I live upon them. Cling to me!
And thus your life, after my life is past,
Shall lay me gently in the arms of Death.
Thus shall you link your being with a soul
Gazing unveiled upon the Great White Throne.
Dear hearts of love surrounding me, farewell!
I cannot see you now; or, if I do,
You are transfigured. ”

“ Do you blame me for crying
When my Zephyr was dying?
I shut my room and my ears,
And opened my heart and my tears,
And wept for the half of a day;
And I could not go
To the rooms below
Till the butcher went away.
David.
Life evermore is fed by death,
In earth and sea and sky;
And, that a rose may breathe its breath,
Something must die. ”

“ My faith and trust all yours, my heart's best love,
My service and my prayers, all yours—all yours!
David.
Rise, dearest, rise! It gives me only pain
That such as you should kneel to such as I.
Your words inform me that you know how weak
I am whom you have only fancied weak.
Forgive you? I forgive you everything;
And take the pardon which your prayer insures.
Let this embrace, this kiss, be evidence
Our jarring hearts catch common rhythm again,
And we are lovers.
Ruth.
Hush! You trouble him.
He understands this scene no more than we.
Mary, he speaks to you.
Edward. ”

“ Mary and Grace
Still hold their chamber and their conference,
And pour into each other's greedy ears
Their stream of talk, whose low monotonous hum,
Would lull to slumber any storm but this.
The children are play-tired and gone to bed;
And one may know by looking round the room
Their place of sport was here. And we, plain folk,
Who have no gift of speech, especially
On themes which we and none may understand,
Have yawned and nodded in the great square room,
And wondered if the parted family
Would ever meet again.
Ruth.
John, do you see
The apples and the cider on the hearth? ”

“ When she thought of old Blue Beard as some do of Judas,
Who with this notion essay to delude us:
That when he relented,
And fiercely repented,
He was hardly so bad
As he commonly had
The fortune to be represented?
David.
The noblest pity in the earth
Is that bestowed on sin.
The Great Salvation had its birth
That ruth within.
The girl is nearest God, in fact;
The boy gives crime its due;
She blames the author of the act,
And pities too.
Thus, from this strange excess of wrong
Her tender heart has caught
The noblest truth, the sweetest song,
The Saviour taught. ”

“ Ruth.
There, little boys and girls—
Off to the kitchen! Now there's fun for you.
Play blind-man's-buff until you break your heads;
And then sit down beside the roaring fire,
And with wild stories scare yourselves to death.
We'll all be out there, by and by. Meanwhile,
I'll try the cellar; and if David, here,
Will promise good behavior, he shall be
My candle-bearer, basket-bearer, and—
But no! The pitcher I will bear myself.
I'll never trust a pitcher to a man
Under this house, and—seventy years of age. ”

“ Were men. 'Tis a great thing to be a man.
Grace.
And fortunate to have an advocate
Across whose memory convenient clouds
Come floating at convenient intervals.
The harvest fields that man has honored most
Are those where human life is reaped like grain.
There never rose a mart, nor shone a sail,
Nor sprang a great invention into birth,
By other motive than man's love of gold.
It is for wrong that he is eloquent;
For lust that he indites his sweetest songs. ”

“ The strength that arms him wrested from a fiend—
He stands, at last, a master of himself,
And, in that grace, a master of his kind.
David.
Familiar visions these, but ever full
Of inspiration and significance.
Now that your eyes are opened and you see,
Your heart should take swift cognizance, and feel.
How do these visions move you?
Ruth.
Like the hand
Of a strong angel on my shoulder laid,
Touching the secret of the spirit's wings.
My heart grows brave. I'm ready now to work—
To work with God, and suffer with His Christ ”

“ The Sabbath morn
That followed all this din and devilry
Swung noiseless wide its doors of yellow light,
And in the hallowed stillness I awoke.
My heart was still; I could not stir a hand.
I thought that I was dying, or was dead.—
That I had slipped through smooth unconsciousness
Into the everlasting silences.
I could not speak; but winning strength, at last,
I turned my eyes to seek for Edward's face,
And saw an unpressed pillow. He was gone! ”

“ Grace.
Most certainly the best,
And quite the rarest, but, unluckily,
The weakest, as we know; for sin and pain
And evils multiform, that swarm the earth,
And poison all our joys and all our hearts,
Remind us most of Eden's forfeit bliss.
David.
Forfeit through woman.
Grace.
Forfeit through her power;—
A power not lost, as most men know, I think,
Beyond the knowledge of their trustful wives.
Mary.
[Rising, and walking hurriedly to the window.]
'Tis a wild night without.
Ruth.
And getting wild
Within. Now, Grace, I—all of us—protest
Against a scene to-night. Look! ”