Henry Kendall

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.