Religious Poems

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ticknor and Fields, 1867 - History - 107 pages

SLOW through the solemn air, in silence sailing, Borne by mysterious angels, strong and fair, She sleeps at last, blest dreams her eyelids veiling, Above this weary world of strife and care. Lo how she passeth!-dreamy, slow, and calm: Scarce wave those broad, white wings, so silvery bright; Those cloudy robes, in star-emblazoned folding, Sweep mistily athwart the evening light. Far, far below, the dim, forsaken earth, The foes that threaten, or the friends that weep; Past, like a dream, the torture and the pain: For so He giveth his beloved sleep. The restless bosom of the surging ocean Gives back the image as the cloud floats o'er, Hushing in glassy awe his troubled motion; For one blest moment he complains no more.

Contents

• ST CATHERINE BORNE BY ANGELS: 1
• KNOCKING: 10
• THE OTHER WORLD: 19
• THE INNER VOICE: 28
• THINK NOT ALL IS OVER: 34
• CONSOLATION: 41
• PAGE: 49
• BELOW: 56
• MIDNIGHT: 65
• A DAY IN THE PAMFILI DORIA: 93
• THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN: 102

Popular passages

Page 36 - Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou ? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.‎

Page 21 - Tis easy now to see How lovely and how sweet a pass The hour of death may be ! To close the eye and close the ear, Wrapped in a trance of bliss, And, gently drawn in loving arms, To swoon to that — from this.‎

Page 89 - When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber, Its closing eye looks up to Thee in prayer ; Sweet the repose beneath Thy wings o'ershading, But sweeter still to wake and find Thee there.‎

Page 88 - WHEN I AWAKE I AM STILL WITH THEE. OTILL, still with Thee, when purple morning breaketh, When the bird waketh and the shadows flee ; Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight, Dawns the sweet consciousness, I am with Thee!‎

Page 32 - WHEN winds are raging o'er the upper ocean, And billows wild contend with angry roar, 'Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion, That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore. Far, far beneath, the noise of tempests dieth, And silver waves chime ever peacefully ; And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er it flieth, Disturbs the sabbath of that deeper sea.‎

Page 19 - T lies around us like a cloud, A world we do not see ; Yet the sweet closing of an eye May bring us there to be.‎

Page 31 - As some rare perfume in a vase of clay Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul, All heaven'sown sweetness seems around itthrown.‎

Page 97 - Those far-off islands of air, The birds are flinging the tidings Of a joyful revel up there. And now for the grand old fountains, Tossing their silvery spray, Those fountains so quaint and so many, That are leaping and singing all day. Those fountains of strange weird sculpture, With lichens and moss...‎

Page 33 - And silver waves chime ever peacefully ; And no rude storm, how fierce soe'er he flieth, Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea. So to the soul that knows thy love...‎

Page 9 - Let not your heart be troubled," then He said, " My Father's house hath mansions large and fair; I go before you to prepare your place, I will return to take you with me there." And since that hour the awful foe is charmed, And life and death are glorified and fair ; Whither He went we know, the way we know, And with firm step press on to meet him there.‎

About the author

Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, one of nine children of the distinguished Congregational minister and stern Calvinist, Lyman Beecher. Of her six brothers, five became ministers, one of whom, Henry Ward Beecher, was considered the finest pulpit orator of his day. In 1832 Harriet Beecher went with her family to Cincinnati, Ohio. There she taught in her sister's school and began publishing sketches and stories. In 1836 she married the Reverend Calvin E. Stowe, one of her father's assistants at the Lane Theological Seminary and a strong antislavery advocate. They lived in Cincinnati for 18 years, and six of her children were born there. The Stowes moved to Brunswick, Maine, in 1850, when Calvin Stowe became a professor at Bowdoin College. Long active in abolition causes and knowledgeable about the atrocities of slavery both from her reading and her years in Cincinnati, with its close proximity to the South, Stowe was finally impelled to take action with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. By her own account, the idea of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) first came to her in a vision while she was sitting in church. Returning home, she sat down and wrote out the scene describing the death of Uncle Tom and was so inspired that she continued to write on scraps of grocer's brown paper after her own supply of writing paper gave out. She then wrote the book's earlier chapters. Serialized first in the National Era (1851--52), an important abolitionist journal with national circulation, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form in March 1852. It was an immediate international bestseller; 10,000 copies were sold in less than a week, 300,000 within a year, and 3 million before the start of the Civil War. Family legend tells of President Abraham Lincoln (see Vol. 3) saying to Stowe when he met her in 1862: "So this is the little lady who made this big war?" Whether he did say it or not, we will never know, since Stowe left no written record of her interview with the president. But he would have been justified in saying it. Certainly, no other single book, apart from the Bible, has ever had any greater social impact on the United States, and for many years its enormous historical interest prevented many from seeing the book's genuine, if not always consistent, literary merit. The fame of the novel has also unfortunately overshadowed the fiction that Stowe wrote about her native New England: The Minister's Wooing (1859), Oldtown Folks (1869), Poganuc People (1878), and The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), the novel that, according to Sarah Orne Jewett, began the local-color movement in New England. Here Stowe was writing about the world and its people closest and dearest to her, recording their customs, their legends, and their speech. As she said of one of these novels, "It is more to me than a story. It is my resume of the whole spirit and body of New England."

Bibliographic information

• Title: Religious Poems
• Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Publisher: Ticknor and Fields, 1867
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Sep 7, 2007
• ISBN: 1508691932, 9781508691938
• Length: 107 pages
• Subjects: History / General; Religion / Inspirational; Religion / Spirituality