I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news—
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her
crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth—
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day’s tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;
In the shuddering forests’ held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still,
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E’en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices—“E’en so, it is so!”
_Stanza 14._—Observe the meeting of the human and divine in the
poet-prophet’s inspiration. As poet, his powers were in their fullest
exercise, and still there was an unfathomable heaven of the unknown
above him, till “one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance.”
The close of this stanza sets before us the scene of the writing of this
reminiscence.
* * * * *
_Stanza 15._—The soothing influence of the singing begins to appear. Be
sure to keep in mind the picture, so wonderfully illustrated, of the
attitude of the two; and mark the words of David, “All my heart how it
loved him,” connecting them carefully with the next stanza (16), “_Then_
the truth came upon me.” It is only to the earnestly-loving heart that
such a revelation of God could be given. “God is Love, and he that
loveth not knoweth not God.” Observe, also, in this short stanza the
effect of the intense earnestness of his soul, leading him to lay aside
his harp and cease his singing, and simply break out in impassioned
speech.
* * * * *
_Stanza 17._—Shall God be infinitely above his creature man, in all
faculties except one, and that “the greatest of all,” viz., Love? (Note,
in passing, the exquisite beauty of the lines: “With that stoop of the
soul which in bending upraises it too,” and “As by each new obeisance in
spirit, I climb to his feet.” The passage immediately following this
line is of course ironical at his own expense, which is indicated by the
parenthetical “I laugh as I think”; as if to say “how utterly foolish
the thought that such a wide province, such a grand gift, as Love,
should be mine quite apart from God, the great Ruler and Giver of all!”)
* * * * *
_Stanza 18._—Impossible! God is the giver: all that I have—Love, as well
as everything else—is from him; I can wish, but cannot will the thing I
would; but God can, therefore God will; his love cannot be frustrated as
mine is; it must even for such as “Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems
now,” find Salvation; being infinite it must have its will, and find a
way, however hard it be (see the striking line “it is by no breath,”
&c.); and _there it is_! See THE CHRIST stand!
Remember carefully the position as explained in the 15th stanza as you
read the magnificent climax, beginning—
“O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee;”
observe also the effect of the spondee with which stanza 18 closes,
instead of the usual anapæst; it gives wonderful dignity and strength to
the thought. The same effect is produced several times in the early part
of the poem by the same means, but nowhere with such power as in this,
the grand climax.
* * * * *
What a contrast here to the petty mechanical notions of inspiration
which have so often degraded the loftiest subject of human thought; and
how marvellously is the presence and the power of the Unseen on such a
soul as David’s imaged forth in the lines of the closing stanza, in
words which seem almost to utter the unutterable.
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