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I

This day relenting God

Hath placed within my hand

A wondrous thing; and God

Be praised. At His command,

Seeking His secret deeds

With tears and toiling breath,

I find thy cunning seeds,

O million-murdering Death.

I know this little thing

A myriad men will save.

O Death, where is thy sting?

Thy victory, O Grave?

August 21, 1897.

II

Before Thy feet I fall,

Lord, who made high my fate;

For in the mighty small

Thou showedst the mighty great.

Henceforth I will resound

But praises unto Thee;

Tho’ I was beat and bound,

Thou gavest me victory.

Tho’ in these depths of night

Deep-dungeon’d I was hurl’d,

Thou sentest me a light

Wherewith to mend the world.

O Exile, while thine eyes

Were weary with the night

Thou weepedst; now arise

And bless the Lord of Light.

Hereafter let thy lyre

Be bondsman to His name;

His thunder and His fire

Will fill thy lips with flame.

He is the Lord of Light;

He is the Thing That Is;

He sends the seeing sight;

And the right mind is His.

III

The cagèd bird awake

All night laments his doom,

And hears the dim dawn break

About the darken’d room;

But in the day he sips,

Contented in his place,

His food from human lips,

And learns the human face.

So tho’ his home remain

Dark, and his fields untrod,

The exile has this gain,

To have found the face of God.

Confounded at the close,

Confounded standing where

No further pathway shows,

We find an angel there

To guide us. God is good;

The seeing sight is dim;

He gives us solitude

That we may be with Him.

By that we have we lose;

By what we have not, get;

And where we cannot choose

The crown of life is set.

Lo, while we ask the stars

To learn the will of God,

His answer unawares

Strikes sudden from the sod.

Not when we wait the word

The word of God is giv’n;

The voice of God is heard

As much from earth as heav’n.

The voice of God is heard

Not in the thunder-fit;

A still small voice is heard,

Half-heard, and that is it.

PÆANS