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s heart, "Rise up and look from where thou art, And scatter with unselfish hands Thy freshness on the barren sands And solitudes of Death." O beauty of holiness, Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! O power of meekness, Whose very gentleness and weakness Are like the yielding, but irresistible air! Upon the pages Of the sealed volume that I bear, The deed divine Is written in characters of gold, That never shall grow old, But through all ages Burn and shine, With soft effulgence! O God! it is thy indulgence That fills the world with the bliss Of a good deed like this! THE ANGEL OF EVIL DEEDS, with open book. Not yet, not yet Is the red sun wholly set, But evermore recedes, While open still I bear The Book of Evil Deeds, To let the breathings of the upper air Visit its pages and erase The records from its face! Fainter and fainter as I gaze In the broad blaze The glimmering landscape shines, And below me the black river Is hidden by wreaths of vapor! Fainter and fainter the black lines Begin to quiver Along the whitening surface of the paper; Shade after shade The terrible words grow faint and fade, And in their place Runs a white space! Down goes the sun! But the soul of one, Who by repentance hath escaped the dreadful sentence, Shines bright below me as I look. It is the end! With closed Book To God do I ascend. Lo! over the mountain steeps A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps Beneath my feet; A blackness inwardly brightening With sullen heat, As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning. And a cry of lamentation, Repeated and again repeated, Deep and loud As the reverberation Of cloud answering unto cloud, Swells and rolls away in the distance, As if the sheeted Lightning retreated. Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance. It is Lucifer, The son of mystery; And since God suffers him to be, He, too, is God's minister. And labors for some good By us not understood! SECOND INTERLUDE MARTIN LUTHER A CHAMBER IN THE WARTBURG. MORNING. MARTIN LUTHER WRITING. MARTIN LUTHER. Our God, a Tower of Strength is He, A goodly wall and weapon; From all our need He helps us free, That now to us doth happen. The old evil foe Doth in earnest grow, In grim armor dight, Much guile and great might; On earth there is none like him. Oh yes; a tower of strength indeed, A present help in all our need, A sword and buckler is our God. Innocent men have
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