FAITH’S WARNING.
Reading edition
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BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.
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The vital elements of all things gifted
With promise or with truth,
By God’s own hand benignantly are lifted
Into perennial youth.
O then, with gentle reverence, surrender
The wish to interfere,
Behold the miracle, devout and tender,
But enter not its sphere!
Childhood, with meek intelligence, appealing,
When guardians annoy,
As gush the sympathies its life revealing,
Asks freedom to enjoy.
Genius, by graceful waywardness, achieving
Its claim the boon to share,
A narrow doom in Fancy’s world retrieving,
Expands untrammeled there.
The throes of nations plead that right be tested—
The Present grapple fairly with the Past,
For Liberty’s pure zeal if unmolested,
Will triumph at the last!
Profane not Love in its divine seclusion,
If true, its hope is sure,
Born in weak hearts it is a chance illusion,
That vainly would endure.
For all things destined to survive, engender
Their own progressive life,
And Truth, forsaken by her last defender,
Yet conquers in the strife.
In its dim crypt of mould the seed implanted
Will germinate and spring,
Poised in her azure realm the lark undaunted
Exultingly will sing!
The prayer of wisdom in these later ages
Is for unchartered right
To turn, at will, her own elected pages,
With unimpeded sight.
To their own law abandon all things real,
Nor, with incessant care,
Strive to conform to thy perverse ideal
What God created fair.