Verses on Various Occasions by John Henry Newman (ebooks online reader txt) 📕

lights thy bashful face,
While the Prophet’s gifted oil
Seals thee for a path of toil.
We, thy Angels, circling round thee,
Ne’er shall find thee as we found thee,
When thy faith first brought us near
In thy lion-fight severe.

Go! and mid thy flocks awhile
At thy doom of greatness smile;
Bold to bear God’s heaviest load,
Dimly guessing of the road⁠—
Rocky road, and scarce ascended,
Though thy foot be angel-tended.

Twofold praise thou shalt attain,
In royal court and battle plain;
Then comes heart-ache, care, distress,
Blighted hope, and loneliness;
Wounds from friend and gifts from foe,
Dizzied faith, and guilt, and woe;
Loftiest aims by earth defiled,
Gleams of wisdom sin-beguiled,
Sated power’s tyrannic mood,
Counsels shared with men of blood,
Sad success, parental tears,
And a dreary gift of years.

Strange, that guileless face and form
To lavish on the scarring storm!
Yet we take thee in thy blindness,
And we buffet thee in kindness;
Little chary of thy fame⁠—
Dust unborn may bless or blame⁠—
But we mould thee for the root
Of man’s promised healing Fruit,
And we mould thee hence to rise,
As our brother, to the skies.

Lazaret, Malta. January 18, 1833.

LXIV A Blight

What time my heart unfolded its fresh leaves
In springtime gay, and scatter’d flowers around,
A whisper warn’d of earth’s unhealthy ground,
And all that there love’s light and pureness grieves;
Sun’s ray and canker-worm,
And sudden-whelming storm;⁠—
But, ah! my self-will smiled, nor reck’d the gracious sound.

So now defilement dims life’s memory-springs;
I cannot hear an early-cherish’d strain,
But first a joy, and then it brings a pain⁠—
Fear, and self-hate, and vain remorseful stings:
Tears lull my grief to rest,
Not without hope, this breast
May one day lose its load, and youth yet bloom again.

Lazaret, Malta. January 19, 1833.

LXV Joseph

O purest Symbol of the Eternal Son!
Who dwelt in thee, as in some sacred shrine,
To draw hearts after thee, and make them thine;
Not parent only by that light was won,
And brethren crouch’d who had in wrath begun,
But heathen pomp abased her at the sign
And the hid Presence of a guest divine,
Till a king heard, and all thou bad’st was done.
Then was fulfill’d Nature’s dim augury,
That “Wisdom, clad in visible form, would be
So fair, that all must love and bow the knee;”
Lest it might seem, what time the Substance came,
Truth lack’d a sceptre, when It but laid by
Its beaming front, and bore a willing shame.

Lazaret, Malta. January 20, 1833.

LXVI Superstition

O Lord and Christ, Thy Children of the South
So shudder, when they see
The two-edged sword sharp-issuing from Thy mouth,
As to fall back from Thee,
And cling to charms of man, or heathen rite
To aid them against Thee, Thou Fount of love and light!

But I before Thine awful eyes will go
And firmly fix me there,
In my fall shame; not bent my doom to know,
Not fainting with despair;
Not fearing less than they, but deeming sure,
If e’en Thy Name shall fail, nought my base heart can cure.

Lazaret, Malta. January 21, 1833.

LXVII Isaac

Many the guileless years the Patriarch spent,
Bless’d in the wife a father’s foresight chose;
Many the prayers and gracious deeds, which rose
Daily thank-offerings from his pilgrim tent.
Yet these, though written in the heavens, are rent
From out truth’s lower roll, which sternly shows
But one sad trespass at his history’s close,
Father’s, son’s, mother’s, and its punishment.
Not in their brightness, but their earthly stains
Are the true seed vouchsafed to earthly eyes.
Sin can read sin, but dimly scans high grace,
So we move heavenward with averted face,
Scared into faith by warning of sin’s pains;
And Saints are lower’d, that the world may rise.

Valletta. January 23, 1833.

LXVIII Reverses

When mirth is full and free,
Some sudden gloom shall be;
When haughty power mounts high,
The Watcher’s axe is nigh.
All growth has bound; when greatest found,
It hastes to die.

When the rich town, that long
Has lain its huts among,
Uprears its pageants vast,
And vaunts⁠—it shall not last!
Bright tints that shine, are but a sign
Of summer past.

And when thine eye surveys,
With fond adoring gaze,
And yearning heart, thy friend⁠—
Love to its grave doth tend.
All gifts below, save Truth, but grow
Towards an end.

Valletta. January 30, 1833.

LXIX Hope

We are not children of a guilty sire,
Since Noe stepp’d from out his wave-toss’d home,
And a stern baptism flush’d earth’s faded bloom.
Not that the heavens then clear’d, or cherub’s fire
From Eden’s portal did at once retire;
But thoughts were stirr’d of Him who was to come,
Whose rainbow hues so streak’d the o’ershadowing gloom,
That faith could e’en that desolate scene admire.
The Lord has come and gone; and now we wait
The second substance of the deluge type,
When our slight ark shall cross a molten surge;
So, while the gross earth melts, for judgment ripe,
Ne’er with its haughty turrets to emerge,
We shall mount up to Eden’s long-lost gate.

Valletta. February 5, 1833.

LXX St. Paul at Melita

“And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat.”

Secure in his prophetic strength,
The water peril o’er,
The many-gifted man at length
Stepp’d on the promised shore.

He trod the shore; but not to rest,
Nor wait till Angels came;
Lo! humblest pains the Saint attest,
The firebrands and the flame.

But, when he felt the viper’s smart,
Then instant aid was given;
Christian! hence learn to do thy part,
And leave the rest to Heaven.

Messina. February 8, 1833.

LXXI Messina

“Homo sum; humani nil à me alienum puto.”

Why, wedded to the Lord, still yearns my heart
Towards these scenes of ancient heathen fame?
Yet legend hoar, and voice of bard that came
Fixing my restless youth with its sweet art,
And shades of power, and those who bore a part
In the mad deeds that set the world on flame,
So fret my memory here⁠—ah! is it blame?⁠—
That from my eyes the