A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF SAINT AUGUSTINE.
Long
pored Saint Austin o'er the sacred page,
And
doubt and darkness overspread his mind;
On God's
mysterious being thought the Sage,
The
Triple Person in one Godhead joined.
The
more he thought, the harder did he find
To solve the
various doubts which fast arose;
And as a
ship, caught by imperious wind,
Tosses where chance
its shattered body throws,
So tossed his troubled
soul, and nowhere found repose.
Heated
and feverish, then he closed his tome,
And
went to wander by the ocean-side,
Where the cool
breeze at evening loved to come,
Murmuring
responsive to the murmuring tide;
And as
Augustine o'er its margent wide
Strayed, deeply
pondering the puzzling theme,
A little
child before him he espied:
In earnest labor did the
urchin seem,
Working with heart intent close by the
sounding stream.
He
looked, and saw the child a hole had scooped,
Shallow
and narrow in the shining sand,
O'er which at work the
laboring infant stooped,
Still pouring
water in with busy hand.
The saint
addressed the child in accents bland:
"Fair boy,"
quoth he, "I pray what toil is thine?
Let
me its end and purpose understand."
The boy
replied: "An easy task is mine,
To sweep into
this hole all the wide ocean's brine."
"O
foolish boy!" the saint exclaimed, "to hope
That
the broad ocean in that hole should lie!"
"O
foolish saint!" exclaimed the boy; "thy scope
Is
still more hopeless than the toil I ply,
Who
think'st to comprehend God's nature high
In the small
compass of thine human wit!
Sooner, Augustine, sooner
far, shall I
Confine the ocean in this tiny
pit,
Than finite minds conceive God's nature
infinite!"
ANONYMOUS.