ATHWART the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his
splendid eyes;
Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of Paradise,
Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangled
relucent dyes.
The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings rustled
his guides’ cymars)
Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each
other with handfuls of stars;
And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by
their tethered cars.
With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, his
guided steps held on
To where on the far crystálline pale * of that transtellar Heaven
there shone
The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father’s Throne.
Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great advent
driven,
Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so was
given,
As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clangèd gates of Heaven.
Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars,
Went a waver of ribbèd fire *—as night-seas on phosphoric bars
Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of
crumbling stars.
At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His
aged dominions
The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their
hauberked minions,
The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involvèd dread of those
mounted pinions.
As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet
earth
At momentary intervals * beholds from its raggèd rifts break forth
The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a
witchèd birth;
Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges
soon,
Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune,
Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the moon:—
With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes
so burned their charge;
Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,—disclosed from their
kindling marge,
Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God’s
light lay large.
Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer’s glories
clings
A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork
things,
Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs’ versicoloured
wings.
A rhymer, rhyming a futile rhyme, * he had crept for convoy through
Eden-ways
Into the shade of the poet’s glory, * darkened under his prevalent
rays,
Fearfully hoping a distant welcome * as a poor kinsman of his lays.
The angels laughed with a lovely scorning: *—“Who has done this sorry
deed in
The garden of our Father, God? * ’mid his blossoms to sow this weed
in?
Never our fingers knew this stuff: * not so fashion the looms of
Eden!”
The singer bowed his brow majestic, * searching that patchwork through
and through,
Feeling God’s lucent gazes traverse * his singing-stoling and spirit
too:
The hallowed harpers were fain to frown * on the strange thing come
’mid their sacred crew,
Only the singer that was earth * his fellow-earth and his own self
knew.
But the poet rent off robe and wreath, * so as a sloughing serpent
doth,
Laid them at the rhymer’s feet, * shed down wreath and raiment both,
Stood in a dim and shamèd stole, * like the tattered wing of a musty
moth.
“Thou gav’st the weed and wreath of song, * the weed and wreath are
solely Thine,
And this dishonest vesture * is the only vesture that is mine;
The life _I_ textured, Thou the song *—_my_ handicraft is not divine!”
He wrested o’er the rhymer’s head * that garmenting which wrought him
wrong;
A flickering tissue argentine * down dripped its shivering silvers
long:—
“Better thou wov’st thy woof of life * than thou didst weave thy woof
of song!”
Never a chief in Saintdom was, * but turned him from the Poet then;
Never an eye looked mild on him * ’mid all the angel myriads ten,
Save sinless Mary, and sinful Mary *—the Mary titled Magdalen.
“Turn yon robe,” spake Magdalen, * “of torn bright song, and see and
feel.”
They turned the raiment, saw and felt * what their turning did reveal—
All the inner surface piled * with bloodied hairs, like hairs of
steel.
“Take, I pray, yon chaplet up, * thrown down ruddied from his head.”
They took the roseal chaplet up, * and they stood astonishèd:
Every leaf between their fingers, * as they bruised it, burst and
bled.
“See his torn flesh through those rents; * see the punctures round his
hair,
As if the chaplet-flowers had driven * deep roots in to nourish there—
Lord, who gav’st him robe and wreath, * _what_ was this Thou gav’st
for wear?”
“Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!” * spake the Father, sweet and low;
Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary’s throne made
irised bow—
“Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than
they know.”
* * * * *