Newman Reader - Verses on Various Occasions

14. The Hidden Ones

{42}
HID are the saints of God;—

Uncertified by high angelic sign;

Nor raiment soft, nor empire's golden rod

Marks them divine.

Theirs but the unbought air, earth's parent sod,

And the sun's smile benign;—

Christ rears His throne within the secret heart,

From the haughty world apart.

They gleam amid the night,

Chill sluggish mists stifling the heavenly ray;

Fame chants the while,—old history trims his light,

Aping the day;

In vain! staid look, loud voice, and reason's might

Forcing its learned way,

Blind characters! these aid us not to trace

Christ and His princely race. {43}

Yet not all-hid from those

Who watch to see;—'neath their dull guise of earth,

Bright bursting gleams unwittingly disclose

Their heaven-wrought birth.

Meekness, love, patience, faith's serene repose;

And the soul's tutor'd mirth,

Bidding the slow heart dance, to prove her power

O'er self in its proud hour.

These are the chosen few,

The remnant fruit of largely-scatter'd grace,

God sows in waste, to reap whom He foreknew

Of man's cold race;

Counting on wills perverse, in His clear view

Of boundless time and space,

He waits, by scant return for treasures given,

To fill the thrones of heaven.

Lord! who can trace but Thou

The strife obscure, 'twixt sin's soul-thralling spell

And Thy keen Spirit, now quench'd, reviving now?

Or who can tell, {44}

Why pardon's seal stands sure on David's brow,

Why Saul and Demas fell?

Oh! lest our frail hearts in the annealing break,

Help, for Thy mercy's sake!

Horsepath.
September, 1829.