‘now, Almighty One, give me faith!’ I was then in the condition in which one must be, but seldom is, when one’s prayers may be accepted by God. Who could paint what I then felt! A powerful impulse drew my soul to the Cross, on which Jesus perished. Thus my soul was near to Him who became Man and died on the Cross, and in that moment I knew what faith is. ‘This is faith!’ I cried, and sprang up, almost as in terror. For such emotions as these, all words fail us.”
34. Is He, in glow of birth,
Rapture creative near?
These two lines, in the original, are a marvel of compressed expression. The closest litera] translation is: ‘Is He, in the bliss of developing into (higher) being, near to the joy of creating,”—that is, the bliss of being born into the higher life to which He has ascended is scarcely less than the joy of the Divine creative activity. The Disciples, left behind and still sharing the woes of Earth, bewail the beatitude which parts Him from them.
The final Chorus of the Angels, which follows, is a stumbling-block to the translator, on account of its fivefold dactylic rhyme. The lines are, literally:—
In order to retain the rhyme, I have been obliged to express a little more prominently the idea of “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of one of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,”—which is implied in the original. Dr. Hedge, I believe, is the only one who has hitherto endeavored to reproduce the difficult structure of this Chorus. He thus translates the five rhymes:—
