His shoulder did I hold
Too high that I, o'erbold
Weak one,
Should lean thereon.
But He a little hath
Declined His stately path
And my
Feet set more high;
That the slack arm may reach
His shoulder, and faint speech
Stir
His unwithering hair.
And bolder now and bolder
I lean upon that shoulder,
So dear
He is and near.
And with His aureole
The tresses of my soul
Are blent
In wished content.
Yea, this too gentle Lover
Hath flattering words to move her
To pride
By His sweet side.
Ah, Love! somewhat let be!
Lest my humility
Grow weak
When Thou dost speak!
Rebate Thy tender suit,
Lest to herself impute
Some worth
Thy bride of earth!
A maid too easily
Conceits herself to be
Those things
Her lover sings;
And being straitly wooed,
Believes herself the Good
And Fair
He seeks in her.
Turn something of Thy look,
And fear me with rebuke,
That I
May timorously
Take tremors in Thy arms,
And with contrivèd charms
Allure
A love unsure.
Not to me, not to me,
Builded so flawfully,
O God,
Thy humbling laud!
Not to this man, but Man,--
Universe in a span;
Point
Of the spheres conjoint;
In whom eternally
Thou, Light, dost focus Thee!--
Didst pave
The way o' the wave,
Rivet with stars the Heaven,
For causeways to Thy driven
Car
In its coming far
Unto him, only him;
In Thy deific whim
Didst bound
Thy works' great round
In this small ring of flesh;
The sky's gold-knotted mesh
Thy wrist
Did only twist
To take him in that net.--
Man! swinging-wicket set
Between
The Unseen and Seen,
Lo, God's two worlds immense,
Of spirit and of sense,
Wed
In this narrow bed;
Yea, and the midge's hymn
Answers the seraphim
Athwart
Thy body's court!
Great arm-fellow of God!
To the ancestral clod
Kin,
And to cherubin;
Bread predilectedly
O' the worm and Deity!
Hark,
O God's clay-sealed Ark,
To praise that fits thee, clear
To the ear within the ear,
But dense
To clay-sealed sense.
Thee God's great utterance bore,
O secret metaphor
Of what
Thou dream'st no jot!
Cosmic metonymy;
Weak world-unshuttering key;
One
Seal of Solomon!
Trope that itself not scans
Its huge significance,
Which tries
Cherubic eyes.
Primer where the angels all
God's grammar spell in small,
Nor spell
The highest too well.
Point for the great descants
Of starry disputants;
Equation
Of creation.
Thou meaning, couldst thou see,
Of all which dafteth thee;
So plain,
It mocks thy pain;
Stone of the Law indeed,
Thine own self couldst thou read,
Thy bliss
Within thee is.
Compost of Heaven and mire,
Slow foot and swift desire!
Lo,
To have Yes, choose No;
Gird, and thou shalt unbind;
Seek not, and thou shalt find;
To eat,
Deny thy meat;
And thou shalt be fulfilled
With all sweet things unwilled:
So best
God loves to jest
With children small--a freak
Of heavenly hide-and-seek
Fit
For thy wayward wit,
Who art thyself a thing
Of whim and wavering;
Free
When His wings pen thee;
Sole fully blest, to feel
God whistle thee at heel;
Drunk up
As a dew-drop,
When He bends down, sun-wise,
Intemperable eyes;
Most proud,
When utterly bowed,
To feel thyself and be
His dear nonentity--
Caught
Beyond human thought
In the thunder-spout of Him,
Until thy being dim
And be
Dead deathlessly.
Stoop, stoop; for thou dost fear
The nettle's wrathful spear,
So slight
Art thou of might!
Rise; for Heaven hath no frown
When thou to thee pluck'st down,
Strong clod!
The neck of God.
_From_ "THE VICTORIAN ODE"
_Written for the Queen's Golden Jubilee Day_, 1897
Lo, in this day we keep the yesterdays,
And those great dead of the Victorian line.[D]
They passed, they passed, but cannot pass away,
For England feels them in her blood like wine.
She was their mother, and she is their daughter,
This lady of the water,
And from their loins she draws the greatness which they were.
And still their wisdom sways,
Their power lives in her.
Their thews it is, England, that lift thy sword,
They are the splendour, England, in thy song,
They sit unbidden at thy council-board,
Their fame doth compass all thy coasts from wrong,
And in thy sinews they are strong.
Their absence is a presence and a guest
In this day's feast;
This living feast is also of the dead,
And this, O England, is thine All Souls' Day.
And when thy cities flake the night with flames,
Thy proudest torches yet shall be their names.
Come hither, proud and ancient East,
Gather ye to this Lady of the North,
And sit down with her at her solemn feast,
Upon this culminant day of all her days;
For ye have heard the thunder of her goings-forth,
And wonder of her large imperial ways.
Let India send her turbans, and Japan
Her pictured vests from that remotest isle
Seated in the antechambers of the Sun:
And let her Western sisters for a while
Remit long envy and disunion,
And take in peace
Her hand behind the buckler of her seas,
'Gainst which their wrath has splintered; come, for she
Her hand ungauntlets in mild amity.
Victoria! Queen, whose name is victory,
Whose woman's nature sorteth best with peace,
Bid thou the cloud of war to cease
Which ever round thy wide-girt empery
Fumes, like to smoke about a burning brand,
Telling the energies which keep within
The light unquenched, as England's light shall be;
And let this day hear only peaceful din.
For, queenly woman, thou art more than woman;
Thy name the often-struck barbarian shuns:
Thou art the fear of England to her foemen,
The love of England to her sons.
And this thy glorious day is England's; who
Can separate the two?
Now unto thee
The plenitude of the glories thou didst sow
Is garnered up in prosperous memory;
And, for the perfect evening of thy day,
An untumultuous bliss, serenely gay,
Sweetened with silence of the after-glow.
Nor does the joyous shout
Which all our lips give out
Jar on that quietude; more than may do
A radiant childish crew,
With well-accordant discord fretting the soft hour,
Whose hair is yellowed by the sinking blaze
Over a low-mouthed sea. Exult, yet be not twirled,
England, by gusts of mere
Blind and insensate lightness; neither fear
The vastness of thy shadow on the world.
If in the East
Still strains against its leash the unglutted beast
Of war; if yet the cannon's lip be warm;
Thou, whom these portents warn but not alarm,
Feastest, but with thine hand upon the sword,
As fits a warrior race.
Not like the Saxon fools of olden days,
With the mead dripping from the hairy mouth,
While all the South
Filled with the shaven faces of the Norman horde.
[D] Who had passed before him in ghostly procession--the "holy poets,"
the soldiers, sailors, and men of science.