Poems (Larcom)/A White Sunday
A WHITE SUNDAY.
IENTERED not the church this good Lord's Day, Albeit my heart was with the worshippers, Who stood beneath the arched and frescoed roof, And sang to Him arisen. The same song I heard innumerable happy birds Trilling outside my window, in the boughs, Among the blossoms;—and the blossoms sang,—I dreamed it not,—"The Lord is risen indeed." Surely there never fell so pure a light From any crystalline cathedral-dome, As that borne down with the soft summer rain Through the pink apple-blooms, the lucid green Of June's uncankered leaves, and branches gray, Scutcheoned with lichens, tracery more antique Than earls or bishops bear upon their shields.
A color not of earth, a tenderness Of spotless snow and rose-bloom, clothed the tree, That stood up underneath the heavens, one flower. The multitude that John saw in white robes, Singing the Heart Divine whose living drops Had cleansed their stains, and warmed them into life,—That multitude looked through my window-panes, And with them I joined praises.
Friends devout, Who listen to the sermon, swell the hymn, Also the Lord accepts my offering. To-day I worship in the apple-boughs, With the great congregation of the flowers That come up to their heights, as came the tribes Of old unto Mount Zion, once a year; A Passover of perfect, open praise.
The world we live in wholly is redeemed; Not man alone, but all that man holds dear: His orchards and his maize; forget-me-not And heart's-ease in his garden; and the wild Aerial blossoms of the untamed wood, That make its savagery so home-like; all Have felt Christ's sweet love watering their roots: His sacrifice has won both earth and heaven. Nature, in all its fulness, is the Lord's. There are no Gentile oaks, no Pagan pines; The grass beneath our feet is Christian grass; The wayside weed is sacred unto Him. Have we not groaned together, herbs and men, Struggling through stifling earth-weights unto light, Earnestly longing to be clothed upon With our high possibility of bloom? And He, He is the Light, He is the Sun That draws us out of darkness, and transmutes The noisome earth-damp into heaven's own breath, And shapes our matted roots, we know not how, Into fresh leaves and strong, fruit-bearing stems; Yea, makes us stand, on some consummate day, Abloom in white transfiguration-robes.
We are but human plants, with power to shut In upon self our own impoverished lives, Refusing light and growth. Unthankfully We flaunt our blossoms in the face of heaven, As if they overshone the eternal Sun That is their inspiration; as if we Sat in ourselves, and decked ourselves with flowers;—An infinite littleness of vanity.
My apple-tree, thou preachest better things; Whispering from all thy multitudinous buds, "To bloom is boundless freedom. It is life From self enfranchised, opening every vein To let in glory from above, and give What we receive, in fragrance, color, fruit; Life, which is heaven's: ourselves dead matter, else."
Some good men say, "We need theology." Others, "Not so, religion is enough." What if both are mistaken,—and both right? God is our need, a Presence and a Life. Theology enthrones him in the mind, Yet sometimes leaves the heart as hard as stone, The hands as lifeless. And Religion, too, Is often only an ambiguous word For transient fervor, or for duty cold, Or vain, self-helpful works of charity. Without Him thought is soulless; rapture blind; Duty a lifelong bondage; love, thin air. Through Him alone is man a living soul: Through Him alone is earth the bride of heaven.
Here in Thy great world-garden, Lord, we stand: And Thou, whose trees we are, who art our sun, Hast once descended to our roots of being, And bloomed and breathed in our humanity, That we might be as Thou, and know no death. The life we live is Thine, not ours. We bloom To gladden earth with sacrifice like Thine, So clad in Thy white robes of righteousness. Keep us! for here the blossoms blight so fast! The fruit is flawed in turning from Thy beams To the biting east, to folly and to sin. And let all trees, the wildings of the wood, And grafts of rarest culture, waft Thee praise.
My apple-tree, thy dome of rose and pearl Will vanish on the morrow, like a dream. Yet every spring, the springs when I am dead, A tabernacle thou wilt build for men; And they will look up through thee into heaven, And hear the hum of bees among thy boughs, A faint sky-music. I shall worship then, With friends beloved, under other shade. Are only palms in Eden? I shall miss The tree whereby Eve fell,—if that thou wert,—Not seeing it beside the River of Life. Thou art too beautiful to be dropped out Of human vision, even beatified. There is no glory of the trees like thine, Though there be many set in Paradise; There must thou blossom also.
Dreams are lost In guessing at the glory of thy boughs In that immortal spring-time.
Ah! dear friends, Sweet memories of the earth, and sad no more, Will float around us in the air of heaven, A fragrance and a melody, when we, Young, glad, and all as if at home again, Sit under our transplanted apple-trees.