IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH Sturge. 355 The world sits at the feet of Christ, The theme befitting angel tongues And trust the unknown for the known IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. IN the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains, Across the charmèd bay Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains Perpetual holiday, A king lies dead, his wafer duly eaten, And Rome's great altar smokes with gums to sweeten And while all Naples thrills with mute thanksgiving, For the dead monster so abhorred while living With a true sorrow God rebukes that feigning; Stands a great city in the sky's sad raining, Silent for once the restless hive of labor, ́Or voice of craftsman whispering to his neighbor For him no minster's chant of the immortals No mitred priest swung back the heavenly portals But Age and Sickness framed their tearful faces And prayers went up from all the dark by-places The pallid toiler and the negro chattel, The human dice wherewith in games of battle Touched with a grief that needs no outward draping, All swelled the long lament, Of grateful hearts, instead of marble, shaping For never yet, with ritual pomp and splendor, A heart more loyal, warm, and true, and tender, And if there fell from out her grand old steeples No crash of brazen wail, The murmurous woe of kindreds, tongues, and peoples Swept in on every gale. It came from Holstein's birchen-belted meadows, Of Indian islands in the sun-smit shadows From the locked roadsteads of the Bothnian peasants, And harbors of the Finn, IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGE. 357 Where war's worn victims saw his gentle pres ence Come sailing, Christ-like, in, To seek the lost, to build the old waste-places, Of severing seas, and sow with England's daisies Thanks for the good man's beautiful example, Some sacred crypt or altar of a temple And heard with tender ear the spirit sighing Not his the golden pen's or lip's persuasion, And truth's directness, meeting each occasion His faith and works, like streams that intermingle, The crystal clearness of an eye kept single The very gentlest of all human natures And love outreaching unto all God's creatures Tender as woman; manliness and meekness That they who judged him by his strength or weakness Saw but a single side. Men failed, betrayed him, but his zeal seemed nourished By failure and by fall; Still a large faith in human kind he cherished, And now he rests: his greatness and his sweetness And death has moulded into calm completeness Where the dews glisten and the song-birds warble, In Nature's keeping, with no pomp of marble The forges glow, the hammers all are ringing; Hard by, the city of his love is swinging But round his grave are quietude and beauty, The fitting symbols of a life of duty TRINITAS. Ar morn I prayed, "I fain would see I wandered forth, the sun and air TRINITAS. No partial favor dropped the rain ;- And my heart murmured, "Is it meet A presence melted through my mood,- I saw that presence, mailed complete Upon her bosom snowy pure "Beware!" I said; "in this I see I passed the haunts of shame and sin, "Who there shall hope and health dispense, I said, "No higher life they know; That night with painful care I read 359 |