The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1854-08-17
For the National Era.
THE HERMIT OF THE THKBAID.

Q, strong, upwelling prayers of faith,
From Utmost founts of life ye start
The spirits pulse, the vital breath
0fsoul and heart
From pastoral toll, from trafic's din,
Alone, in crowds, at homo, abroad,
Unheard of man, ye enter in
Tho ear of God.
Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,
Nor weary rote nor formal chains;
The simple heart that freely asks
In love, obtains.
For man the living temple is:
The mercy seat and chorubim,
And all the holy mysteries,
He bears with him.
And most avails the prayer of love,
Which, wordless, shapes itself in deods,
And wearies Heaven for nought above
Our common needs.
Alone, the Thebaid hermit loaned
At noon time DER tho sacred word.
Was it an angel or a fcnd
Whose voice he heard
It broke the deserts hush of awe,
A human utterance, sweet and mild;
And, looking up the he:mit saw
A little child.
A child, with wonder, widcned eyes,
O'erawed and troubled by the sight
OF hot, red sands and brazcn skies
Aud oochoritn
"What dost thou here, poor man? No shade
OF cool, green doums, nor grass, nor well,
No corn nor vines" Tho hermit said:
With God dwell.
Alone with Him in this great calm,
live not by tho outward sense;
My Nile His love, my sheltcring palm
His providence"
Tho child gazcd round him. "Does God live
Here only ?-whcre the deserts rim
Is green with corn, at morn and eve,
We pray to Him.
"My brother tills beside the Nile
His little field; beneath the leaves
My sisters sit and spin the while
My mother weavcs.
"And when the millOt's ripe heads fall,
And J al the su Rssn;asld haHgs IN R 9d'
Are gifts from God.
"And whom, to share our evening meal
She calls the stranger at the door,
She says, God fills the hands that deal
Food to the poor
Adown the hermits wasted checks
GIistened the flow of human tears:
Dear Lord :" he said, Thy angel speaks,
Thy servant hears"
Within his arms tho child he took,
And thought of homo and life with mon
And all his pilgrim feet forsoOk
Returned again.
The plImy shadows cool and long,
The eyes that smiled through lavish locks,
Homes cradlc-bymn and haryes; song,
And bIeat of Aocks.
90, child" he said, thou teachOst me
There is no place where God is not;
That love will find, wherc'er it be,
A holy spot"
He rose from off the desert sand,
And, leaning on his staff of thorn,
Went, with the young child, hand in hand,
Like night with morn.
They crossed the deserts drcary limo,
And heard the palm, treos nesting fan,
Tho NIe-birds cry, the low of kline,
And voice of man.
Unquestioning, his childish guide
lie followed, as the small hand led
To where a woman, gentle-eyed,
Her distaf fed.
She rose, she clasped her truant boy,
She thanked the stranger with her eyes:
The hermit gazed in doubt and joy
And dumb surprise.
And 10 with sudden warmth and light
tender memory thrilled his frame;
New born, the world lost anchoritc
A man became!
40, sister of Ell Zara's race,
Behold me had we not one mother"
Sho gazed into the strangers face:
"Thou art my brother"
Taught by thy child, whom God hath sent,
That love is more than fast or prayer,
come, toll, care and pain, content,
With thso to share"
Even as his foot the threshold crossed,
The hermit's better life began;
It's hottest saint the Thcbaid lost,
And found man!
JIG. w