For Remembrance (ed. Repplier, 1901)/A Prayer and a Memory
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Church of Eden Hall, November 21, 1900.
A Prayer and a Memory.
Lord! Thou who lovest souls, speak while we hear;
Speak to our hearts which have been taught of Thine;
Hearts chosen of Thy Heart, and lifted near
Thy place of dwelling, where Thy mercies shine,
Clear splendors, pledged of love eternally divine.
We have been wandering very far afield,
Whom Thou hast gathered, as in days of old,
At this same shrine, where still Thy hand doth yield
Abundant blessing for the heads whose gold
Of childhood shines not now, for childhood's days are told.
We have been far (our life has many ways);
Through purple uplands, where the sun has lain
All day in silent warmth, or lost in haze
That rises slowly from the sunken plain
To hide Thy hills from sight through weary days of pain.
We have been wandering; some of us in light,
And some in shadow; some with folded hands
That never knew a burden; some in night,
With only Patience leading them through lands
Untrod of summer, held in winter's frozen bands.
And some have breathed in joy the buoyant air
Of sea-washed coasts; and some have stifled been
In crowded ways, where faces old with care
Look with a backward glance on pastures green,
On forests wide and deep with flowered rifts between.
Behold! In all these ways we knew Thy way!
Our will inclined to Thine, Thou Shepherd dear;
From hill and valley following all day,
Behold us at Thy voice assembled here
Within the fold we knew, by waters still and clear.
Speak to our hearts to-day! With deep emotion
Our voices pleading join a greater cry;
With thousands more across the moving ocean
We praise Thy Heart, and all the reverent sky,
The angel-peopled space, hath heard us from on high.
We praise Thee, and we listen for Thy voice,
The same that spoke long since to her whose fame
Hath made the dying century rejoice;
Who at its young beginning, in Thy name
And for Thy love alone, asserted Thy Heart's claim.
She, holy with a holiness and grace
That bade her follow at Thy kindling glance,
She made her heart Thy dear Heart's dwelling place;
And led through all the lilied fields of France
Thy children to Thy love with love's most swift advance.
Now is Thy servant blessed; and now the south,
With the far north, the radiant east and west,
Give praises for the wisdom of her mouth;
Her deep desire, her soul's unwearied quest
Of hearts to love Thy Heart, wherein her own found rest.
To-day she stands before Thee in the shining
Of Thy high presence; and to-day she pleads,
With all a mother's tenderest divining
Of cares she knows, her children's utmost needs,
And love to them, like light, with consolation speeds.
Dear Lord! Not only by the western sea,
Not only in our sunset land, but there
In Amiens, of ancient Picardy,
The first home of her hope, the cradle fair
Of her great work of love, is heard her children's prayer.
And where the Tiber and the Arno flow;
And where the Alps reach upward to the skies;
Beneath the Cordilleros' peaks of snow;
In fair Peru; and where the shadow lies
Of palm tree, as of pine, the selfsame voices rise.
Those who in youth beneath her gentle rule
Learn their first lesson; those who forth have passed
Into the wide world's strife, a sterner school,
To learn a sterner lore, alike have cast
Their cares aside to-day and backward turn at last.
Back to the fold of peace, back to Thy love,
Our early home; we know the meadow lands;
We know of old the autumn-tinted grove.
We feel the blessing from Thine outstretched hands;
In welcome as of yore Thine imaged figure stands.
Speak to our hearts that we may not forget
The lesson of to-day; bear with us still.
Bend, O Thou Love! more perfectly and yet
More closely unto Thine our wayward will,
Till our world-tired hearts with heaven impulse thrill.
Speak, Lord, that in Thy presence not one spirit
Shall stand unmoved this hour, and not one face
Uplifted to Thine own but shall inherit
Its aureole of Thy undying grace,
No heart but in Thy Heart shall find its fitting place.