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James Whitcomb Riley - We Must Believe
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_"Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief."_


We must believe--
Being from birth endowed with love and trust--
Born unto loving;--and how simply just
That love--that faith!--even in the blossom-face
The babe drops dreamward in its resting-place,
Intuitively conscious of the sure
Awakening to rapture ever pure
And sweet and saintly as the mother`s own,
Or the awed father`s, as his arms are thrown
O`er wife and child, to round about them weave
  And wind and bind them as one harvest-sheaf
Of love--to cleave to, and _forever_ cleave....
                  Lord, I believe:
                      Help Thou mine unbelief.

We must believe--
Impelled since infancy to seek some clear
Fulfillment, still withheld all seekers here;--
For never have we seen perfection nor
The glory we are ever seeking for:
But we _have_ seen--all mortal souls as one--
Have seen its _promise_, in the morning sun--
Its blest assurance, in the stars of night;--
The ever-dawning of the dark to light;--
The tears down-falling from all eyes that grieve--
  The eyes uplifting from all deeps of grief,
Yearning for what at last we shall receive....
                 Lord, I believe:
                     Help Thou mine unbelief.

We must believe--
For still all unappeased our hunger goes,
From life`s first waking, to its last repose:
The briefest life of any babe, or man
Outwearing even the allotted span,
Is each a life unfinished--incomplete:
For these, then, of th` outworn, or unworn feet
Denied one toddling step--O there must be
Some fair, green, flowery pathway endlessly
Winding through lands Elysian! Lord, receive
  And lead each as Thine Own Child--even the Chief
Of us who didst Immortal life achieve....
                 Lord, I believe:
                   Help Thou mine unbelief.
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