Trinitas

At morn I prayed, "I fain would see     How Three are One, and One is Three;     Read the dark riddle unto me."     I wandered forth, the sun and air     I saw bestowed with equal care     On good and evil, foul and fair.     No partial favor dropped the rain;     Alike the righteous and profane     Rejoiced above their heading grain.     And my heart murmured, "Is it meet     That blindfold Nature thus should treat     With equal hand the tares and wheat?"     A presence melted through my mood,     A warmth, a light, a sense of good,     Like sunshine through a winter wood.     I saw that presence, mailed complete     In her white innocence, pause to greet     A fallen sister of the street.     Upon her bosom snowy pure     The lost one clung, as if secure     From inward guilt or outward lure.     "Beware!" I said; "in this I see     No gain to her, but loss to thee     Who touches pitch defiled must be."     I passed the haunts of shame and sin,     And a voice whispered, "Who therein     Shall these lost souls to Heaven's peace win?     "Who there shall hope and health dispense,     And lift the ladder up from thence     Whose rounds are prayers of penitence?"     I said, "No higher life they know;     These earth-worms love to have it so.     Who stoops to raise them sinks as low."     That night with painful care I read     What Hippo's saint and Calvin said;     The living seeking to the dead!     In vain I turned, in weary quest,     Old pages, where (God give them rest!)     The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed.     And still I prayed, "Lord, let me see     How Three are One, and One is Three;     Read the dark riddle unto me!"     Then something whispered, "Dost thou pray     For what thou hast? This very day     The Holy Three have crossed thy way.     "Did not the gifts of sun and air     To good and ill alike declare     The all-compassionate Father's care?     "In the white soul that stooped to raise     The lost one from her evil ways,     Thou saw'st the Christ, whom angels praise!     "A bodiless Divinity,     The still small Voice that spake to thee     Was the Holy Spirit's mystery!     "O blind of sight, of faith how small!     Father, and Son, and Holy Call     This day thou hast denied them all!     "Revealed in love and sacrifice,     The Holiest passed before thine eyes,     One and the same, in threefold guise.     "The equal Father in rain and sun,     His Christ in the good to evil done,     His Voice in thy soul; and the Three are One!"     I shut my grave Aquinas fast;     The monkish gloss of ages past,     The schoolman's creed aside I cast.     And my heart answered, "Lord, I see     How Three are One, and One is Three;     Thy riddle hath been read to me!"