The silence is tremendous here;

My heart is sore and dry;

I’ve wrung out every bloody tear

And found it good to cry.

 

This emptiness that’s taken hold

Seems to be listening

For some word that cannot be told

Except in suffering.

 

I listen with my weary soul,

My spirit limp and still;

Like water welling in a hole,

Fair sights my worn mind fill.

 

The branches this spot encompass

And sprinkle streams of sun;

Leaves glowing green like bits of glass

Quiver while breezes run.

 

The grass gleams back; the insects whirl;

The flowers softly glow;

Blithe birds and little roguish squirrel

All scurrying by me go.

 

And spread out on majestic high,

Its blue and white aflame

With golden sun, the evening sky,

O’er all my world the same.

 

All these are breathing out to me

A signal growing strong,

One thought—joy, joy—pulsing lightly,

A sweet and throbbing song.

 

“Why joy?” I ask. “What is there here

That should my spirit start?

What does your beauty frail to clear

The burden in my heart?”

 

Swift they reply, “Man, we are more

Than only what you see.

Our beauty is not idle, for

It speaks reality.

 

“Such is your Father, such His hand!

Spilling His splendors forth,

Scatt’ring them so you’ll understand

How His love sets your worth!”

 

“Are you His splendors, then?” say I.

“Yet you are not like Him;

For you too change, and slip, and die—

Small joy in what grows dim.”

 

Swift they reply, “Rejoice we must,

And you too, more than all.

We each are bound to die in dust

Since Adam’s grievous fall;

 

“And so we groan in longing, yes,

But longing not in vain;

There runs a song of hopefulness

Through sun and cloud and rain;

 

“For in the second Adam’s rise

We all are made anew,

And though death swallow earth and skies

‘Tis but a passing through.

 

“O learn now what the seedling shows,

That all your suffering

Is but the sowing of what grows

Unto far greater spring.

 

“Rejoice with us, be sown with us,

And fear ye not to dream

That all griefs may joy-blossom thus,

However sight may seem.”

 

So is it thus that flowers fall,

That suns wear out and die,

That loss besieges sinners all

Beneath the dimming sky—

 

So that all things, consumed and spent,

May keep what seedlings hold,

And with the One Who death-bars rent

Spring up a hundredfold?

 

I see it not, it seems so far,

Yet this I shall not lose,

This glimpsing of the things that are—

This I embrace and choose.

 

The Spirit that gives silent things

A mission and a voice

In silence stills my questionings

And calls me to rejoice.