Verses on Various Occasions - John Henry Newman (best beach reads txt) 📗

has done its part,
How sin defiles us still.

Thou, who hast taught me in Thy fear,
Yet seest me frail at best,
O grant me loss with Moses here,
To gain his future rest!

At Sea. December 19, 1832.

XLV The Patient Church

Bide thou thy time!
Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime,
Sit in the gate, and be the heathen’s jest,
Smiling and self-possest.
O thou, to whom is pledged a victor’s sway,
Bide thou the victor’s day!

Think on the sin7
That reap’d the unripe seed, and toil’d to win
Foul history-marks at Bethel and at Dan;
No blessing, but a ban;
Whilst the wise Shepherd8 hid his heaven-told fate,
Nor reck’d a tyrant’s hate.

Such loss is gain;
Wait the bright Advent that shall loose thy chain!
E’en now the shadows break, and gleams divine
Edge the dim distant line.
When thrones are trembling, and earth’s fat ones quail,
True Seed! thou shalt prevail!

Off Algiers. December 20, 1832.

XLVI Jeremiah

“O that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them!”

“Woe’s me!” the peaceful prophet cried,
“Spare me this troubled life;
To stem man’s wrath, to school his pride,
To head the sacred strife!

“O place me in some silent vale,
Where groves and flowers abound;
Nor eyes that grudge, nor tongues that rail,
Vex the truth-haunted ground!”

If his meek spirit err’d, opprest
That God denied repose,
What sin is ours, to whom Heaven’s rest
Is pledged, to heal earth’s woes?

Off Galita. December 22, 1832.

XLVII Penance

Mortal! if e’er thy spirits faint,
By grief or pain opprest,
Seek not vain hope, or sour complaint,
To cheer or ease thy breast:

But view thy bitterest pangs as sent
A shadow of that doom,
Which is the soul’s just punishment
In its own guilt’s true home.

Be thine own judge; hate thy proud heart;
And while the sad drops flow,
E’en let thy will attend the smart,
And sanctify thy woe.

Off Pantellaria. December 23, 1832.

XLVIII The Course of Truth

“Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God.”

When royal Truth, released from mortal throes,
Burst His brief slumber, and triumphant rose,
Ill had the Holiest sued
A patron multitude,
Or courted Tetrarch’s eye, or claim’d to rule
By the world’s winning grace, or proofs from learned school.

But, robing Him in viewless air, He told
His secret to a few of meanest mould;
They in their turn imparted
The gift of men pure-hearted,
While the brute many heard His mysteries high,
As some strange fearful tongue, and crouch’d, they knew not why.

Still is the might of Truth, as it has been:
Lodged in the few, obey’d, and yet unseen.
Rear’d on lone heights, and rare,
His saints their watch-flame bear,
And the mad world sees the wide-circling blaze,
Vain searching whence it streams, and how to quench its rays.

Malta. December 24, 1832.

XLIX Christmas Without Christ

How can I keep my Christmas feast
In its due festive show,
Reft of the sight of the High Priest
From whom its glories flow?

I hear the tuneful bells around,
The blessèd towers I see;
A stranger on a foreign ground,
They peal a fast for me.

O Britons! now so brave and high,
How will ye weep the day
When Christ in judgment passes by,
And calls the Bride away!

Your Christmas then will lose its mirth,
Your Easter lose its bloom:
Abroad, a scene of strife and dearth;
Within, a cheerless home!

Malta. December 25, 1832.

L Sleeplessness

Unwearied God, before whose face
The night is clear as day,
Whilst we, poor worms, o’er life’s scant race
Now creep, and now delay,
We with death’s foretaste alternate
Our labour’s dint and sorrow’s weight,
Save in that fever-troubled state
When pain or care has sway.

Dread Lord! Thy glory, watchfulness,
Is but disease in man;
We to our cost our bounds transgress
In Thy eternal plan:
Pride grasps the powers by Thee display’d,
Yet ne’er the rebel effort made
But fell beneath the sudden shade
Of nature’s withering ban.

Malta. December 26, 1832.

LI Abraham

The better portion didst thou choose, Great Heart,
Thy God’s first choice, and pledge of Gentile grace!
Faith’s truest type, he with unruffled face
Bore the world’s smile, and bade her slaves depart;
Whether, a trader, with no trader’s art,
He buys in Canaan his last resting-place⁠—
Or freely yields rich Siddim’s ample space⁠—
Or braves the rescue, and the battle’s smart,
Yet scorns the heathen gifts of those he saved.
O happy in their soul’s high solitude,
Who commune thus with God, and not with earth!
Amid the scoffings of the wealth-enslaved,
A ready prey, as though in absent mood
They calmly move, nor reck the unmanner’d mirth.

At Sea. December 27, 1832.

LII The Greek Fathers

Let heathen sing thy heathen praise,
Fall’n Greece! the thought of holier days
In my sad heart abides;
For sons of thine in Truth’s first hour
Were tongues and weapons of His power,
Born of the Spirit’s fiery shower,
Our fathers and our guides.

All thine is Clement’s varied page;
And Dionysius, ruler sage,
In days of doubt and pain;
And Origen with eagle eye;
And saintly Basil’s purpose high
To smite imperial heresy,
And cleanse the Altar’s stain.

From thee the glorious preacher came,
With soul of zeal and lips of flame,
A court’s stern martyr-guest;
And thine, O inexhaustive race!
Was Nazianzen’s heaven-taught grace;
And royal-hearted Athanase,
With Paul’s own mantle blest.

Off Zante. December 28, 1832.

LIII The Witness

How shall a child of God fulfil
His vow to cleanse his soul from ill,
And raise on high his baptism-light,
Like Aaron’s seed in vestment white
And holy-hearted Nazarite?

First, let him shun the haunts of vice,
Sin-feast, or heathen sacrifice;
Fearing the board of wealthy pride,
Or heretic, self-trusting guide,
Or where the adulterer’s smiles preside.

Next, as he threads the maze of men,
Aye must he lift his witness, when
A sin is spoke in Heaven’s dread face,
And