126. Divine Favors

Is this returning life that thrills
So sensibly in all my veins?
Can this be heavenly joy that fills
My soul with such mysterious pains?

I see but indistinctly yet
Forms growing like to what I knew;
One sun is rising, one is set,
But which of those two suns is true?

Within my soul there hath been strife;
I hear retreating voices rave;
This stirring in me must be life,
But life on which side of the grave?

Blue sky, green earth, my well-known room!
I waken up to all the past;
But what a look of cheerless gloom
That inward light o'er all hath cast!

0 Lord! what hast Thou done to me?
What marks are these my spirit bears?
Why didst Thou come so frighteuingly,
Why take me, Lord! so unawares?

1 felt Thy touch; self died, — alas!
Only a momentary death;
Ah me! how quickly Thou didst pass^
Within the breathing of a breath!

No revelation did unfold
New secrets to my quickened eye;
No vision on my sight enrolled
Its hieroglyphic pageantry.

I feel no wish to do great things,
Nor is my weakness fortified;
Only, within are murmurings,
Beginning softly to subside.

But in that momentary sleep
One work within me hath been done;
For somehow I have sunk more deep,
Farther into my soul hath gone.

Thy touch hath made me sensitive;
I long to burrow out of sight;
My shame, selfseen, abhors to live,
Humbled by such excess of light.

There have been times when sense of sin
Hath laid my spirits very low;
Yet this sharp light went deeper in;
I never yet was humbled so.