Poems (Hoffman)/The Answer

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

For works with similar titles, see The Answer.

THE ANSWER

Not all unanswered now—the question of my soul
Asked of the cliff's age-furrowed brow,
Lost in the billow's roll;
For softer, grander than human speech
Are the answering thoughts that soothe and teach,
Thoughts launched by God, like sea-weed thrown
On the restless waves of life's great unknown,
Cast up on life's wave-washed beach.
Pure, calm, as a dove to its sheltered nest
My answer came on the wave's white crest.

The question: (This was the troubled thing—
A mourning dove with a broken wing.)
Tell me, oh billows, that roll on roll
Speak more than all things to the human soul!
Why must one spirit feel every dart
That has rent the body or pierced the heart,
Mental and physical, heart and brain,
Is there left one link in life's jeweled chain
That has not quivered with human pain?

The answer: (This was the heavenly thing—
A peaceful dove with a jeweled wing
That fluttered down from the billow's crest
And crossed its wings on a troubled breast.)
"Thou art given the priceless, jeweled key
That unlocks the great heart of humanity,
Thou hast felt their labor, their strife, their pain
Their weary heartaches, their grief and care,
Their bitter struggles and dark despair;
Let not one knock at thy heart in vain."

O little dove with thy folded wings!
O billows that utter such wondrous things!
Ye are thoughts from God; let him send at choice
The ocean thunder, the still small voice;
If they speak from One who alone can know
The height and the depth of our human woe;
Who has felt each pang of our mortal breath,
Sin's serpent fang and the night of death,
And Who o'er the waves of Life's troubled sea
Calls unto the suffering: "Come unto Me."

Touched with His compassion for sin and pain,
In a world that is starving for sympathy,
Where every heart knoweth its misery,
May life's hard lessons be not in vain;
Content if they teach me one noble song
That shall lift one life from the wrecks of wrong.