Like a pendulum I swing from prayer to blasphemy, and back again to prayer; and if I would die at prayer I might go to Heaven, but if I should die at blasphemy I might go to hell, and blaspheme there through the ages, and grow worse, and still worse, until God Himself cannot know me as the child baptized in His own name, and held up in public prayer in the old village church a million years before. I fight, and win, and die.
I plant the green vineyard and gather purple grapes, and as the wine foams in the full flagon, I fall down and cannot taste the inviting cheer.
I build a high house with roof that wind cannot stir nor storm blow through, and when the blazing fire roars from the gleaming hearth, and Comfort, rosy-faced, beams upon me from the pictured walls, I’m sent for and thrust into the grave and prayed over as a failure hero,—perhaps a failure there; handed over to the resurrection, to the Great Unknown, to Ghostland, and a cold stone with lies on it keeps me well down in the earth.
Jesus save me! Christ redeem me! Lord keep me! God help me!—PARKER.
