HAVE faith in God. For whosoever lists <br />To calm conviction in these days of strife, <br />Will learn that in this steadfast stand exists <br />The scholarship severe of human life. <br /> <br />This face to face with doubt! I know how strong <br />His thews must be who fights and falls and bears, <br />By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long, <br />And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers. <br /> <br />Yet trust in Him! Not in an old man throned <br />With thunders on an everlasting cloud, <br />But in that awful Entity enzoned <br />By no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud. <br /> <br />When from the summit of some sudden steep <br />Of speculation you have strength to turn <br />To things too boundless for the broken sweep <br />Of finer comprehension, wait and learn <br /> <br />That God hath been “His own interpreter” <br />From first to last. So you will understand <br />The tribe who best succeed, when men most err, <br />To suck through fogs the fatness of the land. <br /> <br />One thing is surer than the autumn tints <br />We saw last week in yonder river bend— <br />That all our poor expression helps and hints, <br />However vaguely, to the solemn end <br /> <br />That God is truth; and if our dim ideal <br />Fall short of fact—so short that we must weep— <br />Why shape specific sorrows, though the real <br />Be not the song which erewhile made us sleep? <br /> <br />Remember, truth draws upward. This to us <br />Of steady happiness should be a cause <br />Beyond the differential calculus <br />Or Kant’s dull dogmas and mechanic laws. <br /> <br />A man is manliest when he wisely knows <br />How vain it is to halt and pule and pine; <br />Whilst under every mystery haply flows <br />The finest issue of a love divine.<br /><br />Henry Kendall<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/faith-in-god-2/
