Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

VI. Human Experience

The Pastor’s Reverie

Washington Gladden (1836–1918)

THE PASTOR sits in his easy-chair,

With the Bible upon his knee.

From gold to purple the clouds in the west

Are changing momently;

The shadows lie in the valleys below,

And hide in the curtain’s fold;

And the page grows dim whereon he reads,

“I remember the days of old.”

“Not clear nor dark,” as the Scripture saith,

The pastor’s memories are;

No day that is gone was shadowless,

No night was without its star;

But mingled bitter and sweet hath been

The portion of his cup:

“The hand that in love hath smitten,” he saith,

“In love hath bound us up.”

Fleet flies his thoughts over many a field

Of stubble and snow and bloom,

And now it trips through a festival,

And now it halts at a tomb;

Young faces smile in his reverie,

Of those that are young no more,

And voices are heard that only come

With the winds from a far-off shore.

He thinks of the day when first, with fear

And faltering lips, he stood

To speak in the sacred place the Word

To the waiting multitude;

He walks again to the house of God

With the voice of joy and praise,

With many whose feet long time have pressed

Heaven’s safe and blessèd ways.

He enters again the homes of toil,

And joins in the homely chat;

He stands in the shop of the artisan;

He sits, where the Master sat,

At the poor man’s fire and the rich man’s feast.

But who to-day are the poor,

And who are the rich? Ask him who keeps

The treasures that ever endure.

Once more the green and the grove resound

With the merry children’s din;

He hears their shout at the Christmas tide,

When Santa Claus stalks in.

Once more he lists while the camp-fire roars

On the distant mountain-side,

Or, proving apostleship, plies the brook

Where the fierce young troutlings hide.

And now he beholds the wedding train

To the altar slowly move,

And the solemn words are said that seal

The sacrament of love.

Anon at the font he meets once more

The tremulous youthful pair,

With a white-robed cherub crowing response

To the consecrating prayer.

By the couch of pain he kneels again;

Again, the thin hand lies

Cold in his palm, while the last far look

Steals into the steadfast eyes;

And now the burden of hearts that break

Lies heavy upon his own—

The widow’s woe and the orphan’s cry

And the desolate mother’s moan.

So blithe and glad, so heavy and sad,

Are the days that are no more,

So mournfully sweet are the sounds that float

With the winds from a far-off shore.

For the pastor has learned what meaneth the word

That is given him to keep,—

“Rejoice with them that do rejoice,

And weep with them that weep.”

It is not in vain that he has trod

This lonely and toilsome way.

It is not in vain that he has wrought

In the vineyard all the day;

For the soul that gives is the soul that lives,

And bearing another’s load

Doth lighten your own and shorten the way,

And brighten the homeward road.