Leaves from Australian Forests (1869). Faith in God
Have faith in God. For whosoever lists To calm conviction in these days of strife, Will learn that in this steadfast stand exists The scholarship severe of human life. This face to face with doubt! I know how strong His thews must be who fights and falls and bears, By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long, And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers. Yet trust in Him! Not in an old man throned With thunders on an everlasting cloud, But in that awful Entity enzoned By no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud. When from the summit of some sudden steep Of speculation you have strength to turn To things too boundless for the broken sweep Of finer comprehension, wait and learn That God hath been "His own interpreter" From first to last. So you will understand The tribe who best succeed, when men most err, To suck through fogs the fatness of the land. One thing is surer than the autumn tints We saw last week in yonder river bend— That all our poor expression helps and hints, However vaguely, to the solemn end That God is truth; and if our dim ideal Fall short of fact—so short that we must weep— Why shape specific sorrows, though the real Be not the song which erewhile made us sleep? Remember, truth draws upward. This to us Of steady happiness should be a cause Beyond the differential calculus Or Kant's dull dogmas and mechanic laws. A man is manliest when he wisely knows How vain it is to halt and pule and pine; Whilst under every mystery haply flows The finest issue of a love divine.
Henry Kendall’s other poems:
