CHILDREN OF FREEDOM
_O Freedom, beautiful beyond compare, thy kingdom is established!_
_Thou with thy feet on earth, thy brow among the stars, for ages us thy
children_
_I, thy child, singing daylong nightlong, sing of joy in thee._
YORK MINSTER
Solid and ghostly in the pale winter morning—
Thy vast floor worn, worn by the tiny foot-falls of centuries,
The great grey Alps, thy columns, cutting sharply their strong lines
against the delicate tracery of roof and window—
Solid and ghostly, in visionary beauty thou stretchest O nave,
All desolate—vast and desolate.
* * * * *
The murmurs of the outer world tremble faintly along the roof like the
murmur of the sea in some vast sea-shell;
Below, nothing visible moves save one ancient verger, pacing to and fro
or drowsing in his armchair by the stove.
* * * * *
But hark now; from behind the screen the droning mumble of morning
prayers!
It ceases, and the thin boy-voices of the scanty choir take up the
chant.
Strangely from its invisible source, like some river once running strong
but now losing itself in runlets in the sand,
As from out the old mediæval world, faint and far comes sounding that
refrain—
The quaint barbaric tentative uncertain-toned Gregoric refrain, soaring,
Soaring, soaring, through the great desolate nave wandering, in the ears
of the one drowsy verger dying.
* * * * *
And all around over the world spreads winter,
Heavy and silent;
There is no music heard in the streets, nor sound of hope or of
pleasuring—but pinched faces are there,
And in wretched homes reign cold and starvation.
* * * * *
The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Silence and heavy misery
spread their wings dull against the faces of the people. The Church is
dead.
* * * * *
All the long years of Christianity have come to this;
All the preaching and the prayers and the psalm-singing of centuries
have come to this;
All the rapt outpourings of the soul to God, and hidden yearnings of
ages, to this?
The Church is dead. Snow covers the ground. Snug in their firelit homes,
with closed shutters and surrounded by every luxury, the Wealthy the
Pious and the Respectable sit—
And without, the People are dying of cold and starvation.
* * * * *
A nation is dying—
Dying slowly and surely of Unbelief—and there can be no deadlier
disease: no plague of the middle ages, no cholera epidemic, deadlier.
A nation is dying—
Rotting down piece-meal, lethargic even in its misery, weary and
careworn even in its luxury, to the grave.
* * * * *
And I sit and sing.
All the dark winter night, and though the night were ten times pitchier
than it is,
I sit and sing.
Though the gloom spread all around me, though the wan pinched faces
plead terribly upon me, in the midst still I sit and sing: Joy! Joy!—for
I have seen;
Deep in the wide wan eyes I have seen:
And what I have seen—is sufficient.
* * * * *
O what lies deeper far than the life and death of nations—
As the calm Ocean lies deep below the storms which vex its surface;
What all the ages and ages of human life on earth has never never
failed;
What is to humanity as the sun rising in the morning is to nature—
Ever fresh and young and potent, creating new worlds for itself as it
were by merely looking forth upon them;
What rises winged out of all graves—with laughter—leaving the long
vistas of corpses behind; and out of the graves of nations;
What for each man rises out of his own grave, and is never vanquished;
Deep deep—below all words—in the eyes of these wan children,
I have seen—and that is sufficient.
* * * * *
O the fresh fresh air blowing!
Here on the summit of this leafless poplar, under the immense night,
while the tender growing light just outlines the distant hills,
To sit and sing—for pure joy simply to sit and sing!
SUNDAY MORNING AFTER CHURCH
Sunday morning just after church—and a light warm wind from the North
flutters laden with the scent of hay out to sea;
The sea lies crisp and calm, slate-green, stretching itself miles and
miles to the wind—wonderful, ecstatic, pushing back with liquid-velvet
paws upon the shore.
* * * * *
On the sea-side esplanade there is a good-sized crowd—perhaps a thousand
grown men and women walking up and down on one exclusive and fashionable
stretch of grass.
It is quite a sight. Scarlet parasols and blue and white lined with
pink, tall hats shining speckless, kid-gloves reaching to the elbow—with
glitter of gold and silver bangles, and soft sheen and rustle of
dresses. All subdued and polite, colors carefully chosen, voices low,
movements measured.
Let us take a seat here. How pleasant the air is! and the shade of the
great clouds! and the dazzling effect of so many going to and fro!
Here comes one—her face not very easy to be seen for her parasol—but her
chin is softly rounded, and the tinge and tissue of her skin most
delicate. She wears a very light salmon-pink silk slashed with blue. She
is with her mother and an elder sister, and seems to be doing her best,
gentle child, to be the correct thing.
Here another of bolder sort—dark handsome eyes, just flashing often
enough to keep him amused on the man who is walking beside her; lips a
trifle too red, but contrasting well with the great yellow rose on her
shoulder and the violet velveteen tunic; figure admirable, but her face
somewhat wan beneath its petulance and inquisitiveness.
There goes an old beau, carefully brushed grizzled hair, faultless
boots—knows everybody, a good-natured and amusing crony; here a
grey-haired baronet and his wife, both demure and short-sighted (no
question but they have been to church); there again, a few steps to the
left, three young men arm in arm, carefully got up, exchanging whispered
comments.
* * * * *
Hist! this elderly matron and her daughter are coming to sit beside us!
Heavy and heated, in rich silks deeply flounced and embroidered, and
tight spindle-heeled boots—they seem glad of a rest.
The dress of the elder one especially is a study—the flounces, the
innumerable quantity of beads, the formless mass of plaits and gathers,
the wonderful arrangement of whale-bones in the body, the strict lacing
down the back, the frills and lace round neck and shoulders, the several
rings seen on the for a moment ungloved hand, the lump of trinkets
suspended from her waist, and the usual headgear [—one cannot help
thinking of the chaotic mass of human work this idle red easy-tempered
woman carries about on her body].
* * * * *
I close my eyes for a moment. How pleasant still and soft the air is!
A vision goes past of dark and unspoken things—of criminals in prison,
of rags and disease and destitution.
Naked and outcast forms hurry by;
The mother snatches some half-pence from her boy match-seller, and makes
for the nearest gin-shop; squalid streets and courts are in the
background, and filthy workshops;
Forms of humanity pass before me, unclothed; voices hover round,
wordless;
Strange clinging voices call; through the long high arches floating,
through the night strange voices call.
* * * * *
O freedom! O shadow and night! and forms half-shapen in the womb of
night—to the outlet of deliverance!
* * * * *
These naked and outcast—I contemplate them long, undisguised; what they
are is not hidden from me, I go back of them and beyond.
I pass as one among them, and feel the touch of their bodies, and of
their arms twining—and turn down tired and sleep beside those who sleep;
Half-human, crazy, hungry, condemned, bitter-lipped, forsaken,
The young man with divine face so pale and misshapen I see—I see the
poor thin body of the dying mother.
[She is ignorant and unlettered, but when she talks to me in perfect
child-like trust of the future of her orphaned children I think I have
heard the words of the profoundest Wisdom that ever were uttered.]
* * * * *
The rags fall off, the prison doors fly wide.
In vast phalanx, as out of night and oblivion,
Unclothed, majestic, with wounds and disfigurements, as of him who hung
upon the Cross—
With stretched arms, shadow-gigantic and shining, as just alighted on
the earth—they stand. I hear their voices call—
Strange wild and inarticulate—
Through the long high arches floating, through the night their voices
call.
* * * * *
I open my eyes again. The gay crowd still glides past, exchanging
greetings, the flounces and lace are still on the chair beside me. I
catch the fluffy smell.
I rise and pass down towards the sea. It lies there, unnoticed as
before, slate-green and solemn, stretching miles and miles away; but the
wind has risen and is rising, and in the distance here and there it is
fretful with sharp white teeth.
HIGH IN MY CHAMBER
High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime—Midnight.
The great city sleeps with arms outstretched supine under the
stars—deep-breathing, hushed;
Into the kennels of sleep are gone the loud-baying cares of day, and
hunted man rests for a moment.
* * * * *
The spangled stream has gone.
The long procession of carriages through fashionable quarters, the
stream of faces past gay shop-windows,
And high above them the weary face of the needle-woman straining the
last hour of daylight—
All are gone.
Into the hidden chamber of the dark the stream of life has poured
itself,
For the conception of a new day.
* * * * *
The note of sorrow sleeps;
The weary throbbing brain and heart are lulled—assuaged is the tossing
sea;
The wretched prisoner—the prisoner of the needle and dingy attic—is
released: she dreams her impossible dream;
The prisoners of here and there, and of Necessity gripping close as a
vice, are at liberty: they roam out beyond the star-circled walls of
time and hear strange secrets whispered.
* * * * *
But the hour swings onward.
To good and evil alike—to the watching and the sleeping heart alike;
To the mother as she lies beside her infant, sleeping, yet wakeful to
its slightest movement; to the father as he sleeps beside the mother;
To the young man as he lies beside his new-made bride, worshiping
sleepless on her bosom;
To the folded bud of childhood, sleeping deep as on a tranquil sea—to
the bud just disclosed from Eden; and to the child-like relaxed sleep
again of extreme old age;
The hour swings onward.
* * * * *
To the waking fever of remorse;
To the long cadaverous vigil of physical pain;
And to the long vigil of the heart-broken wife praying vainly for
respite from thought;
The hour swings onward.
High in heaven over the supine city—over the wilderness of roofs beneath
the stars—
The hour swings surely onward.
* * * * *
Again the great bell booms.
Blossoming out of silence the rich music swells—
Then dies away—the second stroke of midnight.
And now as if awoken by that note of warning, over the vast city clash a
thousand brazen chattering tongues,
Ding, ding, clack, clack,
From far and near, from railway-tower and steeple—blurring the
thoughtful night—ding ding, clack clack,
With scrambling stroke they hurry to tell the hour—and so straightway
are silent.
But the great bell goes booming slowly on,
High in its tower in heaven among the stars,
Thoughtful, deep-voiced, alone—till it has finished.
* * * * *
So pass the hours, the spacious solemn hours, the shrill chattering
hours,
Out into the night they pass, out into the morning,
For the conception of a new day.
2
High in my chamber I hear the deep bells chime,
Deep deep deep, past all mortal hearing, down in the kennels of sleep
below the world—
The slow and muffled chime.
* * * * *
The strokes of the changing hours of Man,
The slow spacious thoughts of the changing generations—
Through the night rising I hear.
The thoughts of them who gather the generations into the great fold;
Through whose hearts the trampling millions pass—as surely indeed as
through city streets;
The thoughts of them through whose hearts the weary exiles, the
prisoners of time, pass, liberating their souls in prayer till the air
is charged with lightning—
Through the night rising I hear.
* * * * *
These are they who dream the impossible dream—and it comes true;
Who hear the silent prayers, who accept the trampling millions, as the
earth dreaming accepts the interminable feet of her children;
Who dream the dream which all men always declare futile;
Who dream the hour which is not yet on earth—
And lo! it strikes.
3
High in my chamber I hear the deep Bell chime.
* * * * *
Softly softly up through the universe,
Vibrant in every leaf soft-answering, scarce audible ascending,
The great undertone—the deep rich musical solvent, swelling over the
world, saturated with love, soft like the winds of spring (O who will
give it utterance?)—
Through the night rising I hear.
DEEP BELOW DEEP
Deep below deep,
Tearless, impenetrably frozen in misery—
Is it a child or an old man?
[His face is the color of ashes: it is like a vacant spot without
light.]
* * * * *
A child surely, by his top-heavy knock-kneed gait and perching
semi-perceptive ways;
An old man, by the two deep horizontal furrows in his brow.
* * * * *
Come in my child out of the bitter wind, and sit awhile by my fire, and
eat.
You need not speak or explain yourself: just sit down, and when you have
eaten draw your chair close and get warm.
[Perhaps he will thaw, I think, and tell me the story of his life.]
But he sits silent—his hand in mine—with his head deep on his breast;
and hardly moves—except once or twice to pick a bit of rag off the end
of his trousers and throw it into the fire.
Now his cap is off I see it is a fine head—a well-formed head and brow
with short light curling hair;
But when he lifts it his eyes are bleared and slow, with heavy lids, and
they refuse to meet mine.
* * * * *
We sit awhile silent; then with slow fitful answers, only now and then
volunteering a word:
* * * * *
It was my own fault:
I went into t’ pit when they did not want me to;
They gave me a good education—I can read and write well enew—but I would
go into t’ pit.
The very first day I was crushed by a wagon and was laid up a
twelve-month: It was my legs that was crushed—but I got over it.
Then my father died. My mother behaved very bad to me: I don’t live with
them now. When I am in work I lodge down by the Brewery, but now I sleep
where I can.
I have had twelve year at it. I am now twenty-three.
It was all right at first, but times have been very bad lately. When you
work half time you can’t save nothing.
I have been out of work three months. They shortened hands, and I was
thrown out. They don’t care: when times is bad they throw you out to
make it worse.
There’s hundreds clemming one place or another, and they don’t care.
It’s all the same to them that’s well off themselves, and they have done
it to spite us.
* * * * *
Silence.
Again the sunken head, again the impenetrable weary crushed frozen look—
There was no thaw or change whatever.
I knew him for many months, but there was no thaw or change to speak of.
EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE
She lies, whom Money has killed, and the greed of Money,
The thrice-driven slave, whom a man has calmly tortured,
And cast away in the dust—and calls it not murder,
Because he only looked on; while his trusted lieutenants
Supply and Demand pinned the victim down—and her own mother Nature slew
her!
* * * * *
The old story of the sewing machine—the treadle machine;
Ten hours a day and five shillings a week, a penny an hour or so—if the
numbers were of importance.
Of course she fell ill. Indeed she had long been ailing, and the effort
and the torture were slowly disorganising her frame; and already the
grim question had been asked: “Might she have rest?” (—the doctor said
_must_—and for many a month, too.)
And the answer came promptly as usual. “Have rest? —as much as she
wanted! It was a pity, but of course if she could not work she could go.
They would make no difficulty, as Supply would fill up her place as soon
as vacant.”
One more struggle then. And now she _must_ go, for work is impossible,
and Supply _has_ filled her place, and there is no difficulty—or
difference—except to her.
For her only the hospital pallet, and the low moaning of the distant
world;
For her only the fever and the wasting pain and the nightmare of the
loud unceasing treadles;
And the strange contrast in quiet moments of the still chamber and the
one kindly face of the house-surgeon, stethoscope in hand, at her
bedside;
For her only, hour after hour, the dull throbbing recollection of the
injustice of the world,
The bleak unlovely light of averted eyes thrown backwards and forwards
over her whole life,
And the unstaunched wound of the soul which is their bitter denial.
And at last the lessening of the pain, and a sense of quietude and
space, and through the murky tormented air of the great city a light, a
ray of still hope on her eyes peacefully falling;
And then in a moment the passing of the light, and a silence in the long
high-windowed ward;
And one with an aster or two and a few chrysanthemums and one with a
blown white rain-bewept rose half-timidly coming,
To lay on her couch, with tears.
* * * * *
And so a grave.
In the dank smoke-blackened cemetery, in the dismal rain of the
half-awakened winter day,
A grave, for her and her only.
* * * * *
And yet not for her only, but for thousands—
For hundreds of thousands—to lie undone, forsaken,
Tossed impatiently back from the whirling iron—
The broken wheels, or may be merely defective—
Who cares?—
That as they spin roll off and are lost in the darkness,
Run swiftly away (as if they were alive!) into the darkness, and are
hidden;
Who cares? who cares?
Since for each one that is gone Supply will provide a thousand.
* * * * *
Who cares? who cares?
O tear-laden heart!
O blown white rose heavy with rain!
O sacred heart of the people!
Rose, of innumerable petals, through the long night ever blossoming!
Surely by thy fragrance wafted through the still night-air,
Surely by thy spirit exhaled over the sleeping world, I know,
Out of the bruised heart of thee exhaled, I know—
And the vision lifts itself before my eyes:—
* * * * *
_Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it._
In vain millions of yards of calico and miles of lace-work turned out
per annum;
In vain a people well clad in machine-made cloth and hosiery;
In vain a flourishing foreign trade and loose cash enough for a small
war;
In vain universal congratulations and lectures on Political Economy;
In vain the steady whirr of wheels all over the land, and men and women
serving stunted and pale before them, as natural as possible;
_Except Love build the house, they labor in vain who build it._
* * * * *
O rich and powerful of the earth!
Behold, your riches are all in vain—you are poorer than the poorest of
these children!
Against one such whom you have wronged your armies your police and all
the laws that you can frame shall not prevail.
Your palaces of splendor are reared from the beginning upon a foundation
of lies, and the graves that you have dug for others shall be for your
own burial.
* * * * *
The word is gone forth!
The wealth the power that you have coveted crumble from your grasp as in
a dream.
You have thought to drive armies of starving slaves to win idleness and
luxury for you;
But it shall be as a dream: they shall surely elude you.
Behold, your armies shall vanish away—even while the word is on your
lips, while your hand of command is lifted,
Your armies shall vanish away like smoke, they shall surely surely elude
you.
* * * * *
In Death shall they vanish away,
(O fragrance wafted through the still night-air!)
In Death shall they breathe through your bonds and become as the
impalpable winds.
Like deserters at night stealing away in thousands out of a camp,
They shall pass a ghostly army to the other side:
Broken and worn and sick—a ghostly army shall they pass and vanish;
And ye shall dream that they are gone.
* * * * *
But they are not gone.
For with the morning, out of the ground,
Out of their mother Earth—star-thick, and ye cannot bind them more than
ye can bind the stars—
Out of the heart of their mother, and out of the hearts of the asters
and star-shaped chrysanthemums,
Arising—
Through the hollow air and down the rustling flowing rivers,
Over the meadows with the feet of the wind whitening the grass,
From the mystic chambers of their innumerable homes—out of the mystic
doors—
Out of the doors of Death and Birth, in thousands, out of the doors of
preparation,
Full-equipped hastening, from all sides swiftly gathering,
A radiant army into your great towns pouring,
Down your long streets striding, they shall return.
* * * * *
Spirits of awful knowledge,
(Clad anew with fleshly hands and feet, through sunlit eyes still
glancing,)
And of deep-gathered silent age-long experience;
Spirits of the suffering brotherhood, spirits of awful authority—
Before whom materials shrivel and the accumulations of Custom are blown
on the wind like chaff—
A self-appointed army they shall return:
* * * * *
Out of whom the word of transformation—
Whispered on many a half-awakened winter day to the silent earth alone—
Shall be spoken aloud as with a trumpet over the world—and the world
shall be changed.
I COME FORTH FROM THE DARKNESS
I come forth from the darkness to smite Thee.—
Who art thou, insolent of all the earth,
With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread,
And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils
Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee?
Coward, without a name!
Ignorant curse!—and yet with names as many
Alas! almost as Wealth has. Unclean life
That makest a blight wherever thou alightest!
I smite thee back.
Darest thou yet be seen? (How long, how long,
O patient suffering men will ye endure?)
Darest thou yet be seen?
I smite thee back. Go, return whence thou camest.
The gardens and the beautiful terraces,
The palaces and theatres and halls
Of our fair cities shall not see thee more.
* * * * *
From this day the word is gone forth which waited long to be spoken.
Who walks the streets shall see the lightning which is not in the clouds
but in the eyes of men,
Poising itself to strike.
* * * * *
O shallow-pate, walking for ever in indifferent ignorance!
Thou with the languid averted eyes and impossible patronising airs,
Thou forged bank-note which the great winds will blow crackling into the
coping of heaven,
Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes?
* * * * *
Thou at thy club or country seat or in thy study, or sitting in the
front pew at church—so luxurious, refined, learned,
So pious—yet all out of other men’s labor;
Thou eager after elegant recognitions through the street hastening—
Vulgar and infidel—from her path the poor woman with her bundle
impatiently pushing;
Thou in the household, in the shop, on the railway, with nameless airs
the shameful difference marking;
Thou oily in the pulpit ever preaching: Peace, peace—where there is no
peace;
Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes—
To see and still to see—to stare with astonishment
Over this wide and troubled Ocean, washing so near-importunate upon
thee?
* * * * *
This strange thing that it throws up in thy path!
With wild eyes, bloodshot, haggard!
Hast thou observed it?—hast thou well regarded?
In thy smooth progress, say, hast well regarded?
* * * * *
What? and thou seest nothing?—O look look!
The grey old Ocean shivers in his sleep:
Dreamwalker by the perilous brink, O look!
The grey old Ocean shivers, turns his lids
Whose lashes are the lightning, and arises
Staggering from his hollows (Hear, O hear
The hoarse wolf-howling in the pitchy night).
The thunder of his footsteps shakes the interminable shore:
Dream-walker, look!
This white thing in thy path!
Art mad? O look!—the wild eyes seest thou not?
The warning arm?—no flimsy phantom this,
No pale stray figment of thy brain: but He.
* * * * *
Thus by the shore continually,
Pale spectral close-lipped haggard full in thy path warning He stands,
And thou complacent languid with averted eyes passest by him and onward,
continually, to thy doom.
* * * * *
Thou shalt never open thine eyes: (deep flashes to deep:)
But the lightning which thou seest not shall wither thee up,
And suddenly, in a moment, the flood uprising shall erase thee.
* * * * *
O Deep flashing upward continually,
Wild beautiful Ocean of faces!
Ocean of glittering salt spray of tears!
Of proud perpetual faith glooming through the long night!
Ocean of day and night!
With white waves riding up continually,
White faces nearing through the gloom—eager in endless beauty!
Not lightnings only:
Tenderest phosphorescence over the wide-heaving surface gleaming,
This also is thine.
* * * * *
O pity! pity!
And it might draw the heart of a man in pity from him!
If he had eyes—to see, and still to see—
To and fro through the streets wandering starless,
Faces _not_ charged with lightning, but with sorrow, voiceless unsmiting
distant-luminous,
(Auroral surely towards some greater day,)
Eyes wistful-ignorant—the bloom of youth so fast going never to return—
From dirt-bespattered countenances pathetically looking,
Trustful reliant eyes—and whom to rely on?
(Whom, these dumb thousands of years?)
Parted lips yearning,
Pale woman lips mute-appealing,
Through the gay street unnoticed passing,
From the haunts of fashion flying, from the blank stare of the houses of
wealth and refinement,
To hide their sorrow where none shall understand,
Joyless, unaccusing.
(O lips, your accusation is it not heard in the topmost heaven?)
* * * * *
Faces of the world’s deliberate refusal;
Dead-pale faces, shrunken, as of leaves that the frost kills,
Going about to hide themselves from the sun, to lie rotting and rotting
in the dark, like the leaves—
In the dark soil which their generations enrich.
* * * * *
Face of the stedfast eyes, growing ever paler—of the weary human
shuttle,
Swift between factory and slum to the terrible engine-pulse of necessity
alternating.
Sacred pathetic face of the aged slave, out of the world descending,
Of the old woman, mender of carpets—giver of much and receiver of little
in this life;
Face of unquestioning submission, kindly consecrating face, out of the
world at length with farewell benedictions descending,
Sublimely ignorant of all offence.
Weak face of the drunkard—soon to be labeled suicide;
Pale covert-eyed face of the thief;
Faces ever, faces riding up continually, eager in endless beauty,
O it might draw the heart of a man from him with pity to behold you.
* * * * *
But the world which has deliberately refused you, how shall it dare to
pity you?
[O vulgar and infidel and shallow and insolent of all the earth, and ye
who have taught yourselves so that ye _can_ give no help,
Come ye not here. Is it not sacred ground?
Come ye not here. Defile not with your pity.
Nay, for ye are smitten back and gone whence ye shall never return—
You and your pity—abolished into the void.]
Dumb awful prisoners! who except Death shall dare to pity you?
To kiss you with the close kiss of deliverance?
To take you up unto the mountain tops and show you the country you have
conquered for men?
* * * * *
The word which waited so long to be spoken, behold it is gone forth.
Lo! shooting of swift auroral gleams,
Thoughts hither and thither spreading, coherent,
Words, hark! babbling multitudinous,
Waves to and fro in the sunlight flowing, lisping—
Louder and louder lisping—into one consent waking!
* * * * *
O hearts, not in vain!
Joy, joy—so long a stranger upon earth—
Joy is come up! see the great laughing Ocean!
The deep floor paved with flowers!
Joy is come up. Its waves flow over the world!
To and fro, to and fro, tossing, tumultuously dancing,
The sunlight-smitten waves flow over the world!
How is the great deep changed! Joy is come up.
Wealth the great gloom, the last worst tyranny,
Sinks—is gone down for ever. Arise! arise!
The gardens and the beautiful terraces,
The palaces and theatres and halls
Of our fair cities await your smiles, O Man:
Your solemn love which is their dignity,
Your earnest solemn love, their sacrament,
With outstretched arms they wait.
Arise, O Man!
The long inheritance of the ages waits:
Lo! the fair earth is thine—at length is thine.
Joy! Joy!
The light air and the nimble winds, the blue
Cloud-islanded seas of heaven, the great glad fields
Waving with golden grain, green orchards dusk
With pensive shadows—all the round earth is thine.
* * * * *
Child that shalt bless thy mother,
Joy, joy! The earth is thine.
SUNDAY MORNING NEAR A MANUFACTURING TOWN
Sunday, a still autumn morning, and all the roads on the outskirts are
throng with people.
Where the streets begin to run wild towards the country, with patch-work
of garden-allotments, and occasional hedgerows and overhanging trees,
they go—
Pale-faced men and girls hardly escaped for an hour or two from
breathing the eternal smoke.
* * * * *
The sun shines softly—it is very pleasant.
Here comes a whole family: the mother holds a baby to her breast, the
father carries the little boy on his arm—two other children play around
them;
There go two factory girls, with faded shawls thrown over their
heads—their arms round each other’s necks; both have clear soft eyes,
and both have fawn-colored opaque skins, marked with the small-pox;
Here shambling along in the opposite direction a group of ill-made boys,
carrying dinner-kerchiefs crammed and purple-stained with blackberries.
They have been out early and are returning.
Most of the men stand about in knots on the road or in their gardens,
some smoking—some with fox-terriers and coursing-dogs.
Handsomely stand the yellow and the lilac dahlias on their tall stalks;
and the marigolds and other flowers look well amid the green. The air is
full of the scent of celery.
Some are banking up their celery-beds, some are getting potatos, others
lie on their backs enjoying the lazy air, others are gathering flowers.
Here comes one with a nosegay of all sorts, here another with a great
armful of dahlias nodding amid their leaves as he walks, here another
with quantities of brown and yellow calceolaria—almost every one has a
flower of some sort.
There is plenty of chaff as the groups of young mechanics pass the
groups of chatting laughing girls—some go apart arm in arm together.
Withal the wan look of many faces there is I know not what sense of
naturalness and wholesome feeling abroad to-day (the stuffy people are
safe out of the way in church)—
The air is full of voices and laughter; from some of the neighboring
cottages come sounds of music.
* * * * *
It is well. I welcome you, O crisp uprising life!
I welcome you, O crisp green shoot which the still bright morning has
called forth!
It does not need much to see how deep your roots are fed in the strong
soil of necessity;
Not much to see how native and fresh a life you indicate,
And that the limp decaying leaves and dead things of the earth will not
overlie you much longer.
IN THE DRAWING ROOMS
In the drawing-rooms I saw scarce one that seemed at ease;
They were half-averted sad anxious faces, impossible pompous faces,
drawling miowling faces, peaked faces well provided with blinkers,
And their owners kept standing first on one leg and then on the other.
* * * * *
I felt very depressed.
Wherever I went it was the same—it was like a nightmare—I could not
escape from it.
Ever the same miowls and drawls, the same half-averted sad uneasy looks,
the same immensely busy people doing really nothing, the same one-legged
weary idling, mutual boredom, and vampire business.
In the street I could not escape it—at the soirée, the lecture room, the
concert; I felt stifled; the sky above me was like lead, and the earth—I
could have lain on it and cried as a child,
For I felt like one deprived of his natural food, exhausted, and faint
with starvation.
[For indeed it is so, that man can not live by bread alone. This is the
silent decree of immortality whereby into his body are wrought for its
nourishment unseen intangible essences—of the faces of his fellows and
of the touch of their bodies and the breath of their lives about him.
Which avenues if they be shut—if the faces be like closed doors, and the
hands be withdrawn, and the breath of society about him be corrupt—a man
shall shrivel and die, as surely as an infant from its mother’s breasts
forbidden.]
And at the railway station, and in the train flying over field and river
through the dark, I could not escape that vampire horror.
* * * * *
Was this then the sum of life?
A grinning gibbering organisation of negations—a polite trap, and circle
of endlessly complaisant faces bowing you back from all reality!
Was it that men should give all their precious time and energy to the
plaiting of silken thongs and fetters innumerable—
To bind themselves prisoners—to condemn themselves to pick oakum of the
strands of real life for ever?
Was it mere delusion and bottomless nightmare? really at last the much
talked-of and speculated-about existence in two dimensions only?
* * * * *
And as I thought of the fields and rivers below me in the dark,
returning life thrilled in a faint wave of laughter through me from the
beautiful bounding earth;
And as a woman for the touch of a man,
So I cried in my soul even for the violence and outrage of Nature to
deliver me from this barrenness.
* * * * *
Well, as it happened just then—and as we stopped at a small
way-station—my eyes from their swoon-sleep opening encountered the grimy
and oil-besmeared figure of a stoker.
Close at my elbow on the foot-plate of his engine he was standing,
devouring bread and cheese,
And the firelight fell on him brightly as for a moment his eyes rested
on mine.
* * * * *
That was all. But it was enough.
The youthful face, yet so experienced and calm, was enough;
The quiet look, the straight untroubled unseeking eyes, resting upon
me—giving me without any ado the thing I needed.
[Indeed because they sought nothing and made no claim for themselves,
therefore it was that they gave me all.]
* * * * *
For in a moment I felt the sting and torrent of Reality.
The swift nights out in the rain I felt, and the great black sky
overhead, and the flashing of red and green lights in the forward
distance,
The anxious straining for a glimpse sideways into the darkness—cap tied
tightly on—the dash of cold and wet above, the heat below:
All this I felt, as it had been myself.
The weird look of hedgerows and trees in the wild glare as we pass, the
straining and leaping of the engine, and the precious human freight
madly borne behind,
The great world reeling by, the rails and the ballast ribbon-like
unreeling—out of darkness arriving—phantasmal inexorable flawless!
[Stand firm, bridge of many arches while we pass swiftly over the tops
of the trees!
Hold, ties and struts and well-braced girders, hold while our iron feet
ring resounding over the river!
Hold firm, phantasmal world, even as thou dost—inexorably firm—whether
for good or evil, hold!]
O the mad play!
And the dumb sense of tension when wife or sister or friend is one of
the precious freight;
And the long hours of unremitted watchfulness, and the faithful
unremitting service of the machinery;
And the faithful responsive wheeling of the stars, fulfilling the hours,
The slow lifting of the Moon through the clouds, the changes of light,
west and east,
And the breaking of the morning.
* * * * *
All these in his eyes who stood there, lusty with well-knit loins,
devouring bread and cheese—all these and something more:
Nature standing supreme and immensely indifferent in that man, yet
condensed and prompt for decisive action:
True eyes, true interpreters, striking as a man wielding a sledge
strikes, in whom long practice has ensured the absolute consent of all
his muscles!
True eyes, true interpreters—of abounding gifts free givers—
Without wrigglings and contortions, without egotistic embarrassments,
grimaces, innuendos,
Without constraint and without stint, free!
O eyes, O face, how in that moment without any ado you gave me all!
How in a moment the whole vampire brood of flat paralytic faces fled
away, and you gave me back the great breasts of Nature, when I was
rejected of others and like to die of starvation.
I do not forget.
It is not a little thing—though you passed away so quickly and were
wholly unconscious of it.
* * * * *
It is not a little thing, you—wherever you are—following the plough, or
clinging with your feet to the wet rigging, or nursing your babe through
the long day when your husband is absent, or preparing supper for his
return, or you on the foot-plate of your engine—
Who stand mediating there against Necessity, wringing favors and a
little respite for your fellows, translating the laws for them, making a
channel for the forces;
In whom through faithful use, through long patient and loyal exercise
the channels have become clean—
[Clean and free the channels of your soul, though your body be smirched
and oily—]
It is not a little thing that by such a life your face should become as
a lantern of strength to men;
That wherever you go they should rise up stronger to the battle, and go
forth with good courage.
Nay, it is very great.
* * * * *
I do not forget.
Indeed I worship none more than I worship you and such as you,
Who are no god sitting upon a jasper throne,
But the same toiling in disguise among the children of men and giving
your own life for them.
IN A MANUFACTURING TOWN
As I walked restless and despondent through the gloomy city,
And saw the eager unresting to and fro—as of ghosts in some sulphurous
Hades;
And saw the crowds of tall chimneys going up, and the pall of smoke
covering the sun, covering the earth, lying heavy against the very
ground;
And saw the huge refuse-heaps writhing with children picking them over,
And the ghastly half-roofless smoke-blackened houses, and the black
river flowing below;
As I saw these, and as I saw again far away the Capitalist quarter,
With its villa residences and its high-walled gardens and its
well-appointed carriages, and its face turned away from the wriggling
poverty which made it rich;
As I saw and remembered its drawing-room airs and affectations, and its
wheezy pursy Church-going and its gas-reeking heavy-furnished rooms and
its scent-bottles and its other abominations—
I shuddered:
For I felt stifled, like one who lies half-conscious—knowing not clearly
the shape of the evil—in the grasp of some heavy nightmare.
* * * * *
Then out of the crowd descending towards me came a little ragged boy:
Came—from the background of dirt disengaging itself—an innocent wistful
child-face, begrimed like the rest but strangely pale, and pensive
before its time.
And in an instant (it was as if a trumpet had been blown in that place)
I saw it all clearly, the lie I saw and the truth, the false dream and
the awakening.
For the smoke-blackened walls and the tall chimneys, and the dreary
habitations of the poor, and the drearier habitations of the rich,
crumbled and conveyed themselves away as if by magic;
And instead, in the backward vista of that face, I saw the joy of free
open life under the sun:
The green sun-delighting earth and rolling sea I saw,
The free sufficing life—sweet comradeship, few needs and common
pleasures—the needless endless burdens all cast aside,
Not as a sentimental vision, but as a fact and a necessity existing, I
saw
In the backward vista of that face.
* * * * *
Stronger than all combinations of Capital, wiser than all the Committees
representative of Labor, the simple need and hunger of the human heart.
Nothing more is needed.
All the books of political economy ever written, all the proved
impossibilities, are of no account.
The smoke-blackened walls and tall chimneys duly crumble and convey
themselves away;
The falsehood of a gorged and satiated society curls and shrivels
together like a withered leaf,
Before the forces which lie dormant in the pale and wistful face of a
little child.
WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH THEE
Weary with the restless burden of this world last night I fell
Dreaming on my couch, in Nature’s bosom, and the dream was well;
For with morning I awoke triumphant like a child in glee,
Singing: World, I prithee tell me, What have I to do with thee?
* * * * *
I who am a child, content if but with wonder and with love,
With the quiet Earth beneath me and the splendid Sun above,
To whom laughter comes unbidden in the watches of the night,
Whom a daisy in the meadow fills with ever new delight—
World, unquiet world I dwell in, with thy wearisome grimaces,
(Like an old and odious lover, who importunately paces
Ever up and down before one,) world of fashion, world of cant,
World of philanthropic schemes, committee-meetings, crazes, rant,
World of void affected duties, world quite dumb of love’s decree,
O thou solemn prig, pray tell me, What have I to do with thee?
* * * * *
I whom nature made rejoicing in my meed of strength and skill,
Proud with those I love to labor, lingering in the sweet air, till
Twilight brings the firelit home and faces, whom she counted free
To all her stores, nor stayed to reckon, whom she taught the mystery
Of the whole Earth inly heaving with desire hid at the core,
Whom she filled with tender grieving, whom she smote with passion sore—
World of brick walls in perspective, world of avenues of dirt,
World of hideous iron railings, stucco and the window-squirt,
World of pigmy men and women, dressed like monkeys, that go by,
World of squalid wealth, of grinning galvanised society,
World of dismal dinner-parties, footmen, intellectual talk,
Heavy-furnished rooms, gas, sofas, armchairs, girls that cannot walk,
Books that are not read, food music novels papers flung aside,
World of everything and nothing—nothing that will fill the void;
World that starts from manual labor, as from that which worse than
damns,
Keeps reality at arm’s length, and is dying choked with shams,
World, in Art and Church and Science, sick with infidelity,
O thou dull old bore, I prithee, What have I to do with thee?
* * * * *
Who is master? Tell me that. Didst thou make me? or thinkest thou
By the bold array thou donnest, by thy frowns and puckered brow,
To impose that flam upon me? Nay! for far too clearly through
Thy false life and fancy make-up, through the artificial hue
Health paints not upon thy cheek, thy glassy eyes with sunken rims
Staring, and the meaningless spasmodic corpse-dance of thy limbs—
Right through thy whole being looking into what once was thy heart
I behold how hollow lifeless and corrupt a thing thou art.
* * * * *
Strange!—yet so it is—that stronger than a world on granite piled,
More than all Wealth and Tradition is the weak sigh of a child.
We—the future’s dreamers—come, and coming look thee in the face:
“World, to _Right-about_” we bid thee; “_March_—and quickly—into space!”
AS TO YOU O MOON
As to you O Moon—
I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through their
telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body;
But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully they do not see
you personal and close—
As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last night to the eyes
of a child,
When you thought no one else was looking.
* * * * *
Gustily ran the wind down the bare comfortless street, the clouds flew
in long wild streamers across your face, the few still on foot were
hurrying homewards—
When, as between the wisps of rain O moon you shone out wonderfully bare
and bright,
Lo! far down in the face of a boy I saw you.
* * * * *
Dashed with rain, wet with tears,
Stopping suddenly to lean his head against a wall, caught by your look—
The pale smudged face, the tense glittering eyes, never swerving a
moment,
The curls fringing his dirty cap, the rare pale light of wonder and of
suffering:
Yes, far down, as in a liquid pool in the woods, centuries down under
the surface, as I passed I distinctly saw you.
* * * * *
I should like to know what you were doing there,
You old moon, with your magic down in that boy’s soul so powerfully
working,
While all the time the appearance of you was journeying up above in the
sky!
I should like to know how many thousands and thousands you have looked
at like that, so quietly and calm-deceptively:
Why, the reflected light is in their eyes yet—pale sleepless maidens
looking out from ivied casements, choral processions winding upwards at
dusk to the groves of Ashtoreth, cave-dwellers ages ago sitting at the
mouths of their caves—I see the glitter of sparkles as from an immense
ocean.
* * * * *
You are an artful old (heavenly) body!
One might almost think that there really was nothing behind those
wrinkles,
And that the effluences of gravitation and magnetism which the
astronomers think so much of were really the last word to be said about
you—as a child might know an elderly dame by the camphor bag which she
carried in her pocket, and nothing more.
Yet I fancy that as you jog along round the earth you take very good
note in your quiet way of the limpid faces looking up at you, peering
deep—centuries down—into each;
I fancy that you are not ill-pleased to pass as you do for a harmless
old lady—plucking thus with the less hindrance the flowers that you
love;
I fancy that somewhere among the niches and chasms of those rugged
craters you surely treasure them up, sacred and faithful, against a day
that we little dream of;
Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield
yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,
And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as little
about you as any one—
Perhaps less than most.
* * * * *
How curious the mystery of creation, the juggle of the open daylight!
and all things sworn conspirators to that end!
Lo! the quiet moon in the sky—yet to a child it has told its secret.
SQUINANCY-WORT
What have I done?—
I am a little flower,
Out of many a one
That twinkles forth after each passing shower.
White, with a blushful glow,
In the sweet meadows I grow,
Or innocent over the hill tops sport and run.—
What have I done?
Many an age agone,
Before man walked on earth,
I was. In the sun I shone;
I shook in the wind with mirth;
And danced on the high tops looking out seaward—where I had birth
Web-footed monsters came
And into the darkness went
In ponderous tournament,
Many an age agone.
But on the high tops I dwelt ever the same,
With sisters many a one,
Guiltless of sin and shame!—
What have I done?
What have I done?—_Man_ came,
Evolutional upstart one!
With the gift of giving a name
To everything under the sun.
What have I done?—Man came
(They say nothing sticks like dirt),
Looked at me with eyes of blame,
And called me “Squinancy-wort.”
What have I done? I linger
(I cannot say that I live)
In the happy lands of my birth;
Passers-by point with the finger;
For me the light of the sun
Is darkened. Oh, what would I give
To creep away and hide my shame in the earth!—
What have I done?
Yet there is hope. I have seen
Many changes since I began.
The web-footed beasts have been
(Dear beasts!)—and gone, being part of some wider plan.
Perhaps in his infinite mercy God will remove this Man!
_Not of myself—I have no power of myself_—
_But out of you who read do I write these words_;
_And whether you understand them or not is nothing to me: I sort rather
with those who do not read them._
LO! I OPEN A DOOR
Lo! I open a door.
Through all suffering, through being an outcast myself, in prison and
condemned,
Lying on the floor of existence as one accursed and outlawed—
Who shall not pass by me into joy eternal?
BY THIS HEART
By this heart sacred for you O children—for you a few years beating;
By the deep yearnings of it, flowing, following you—and the world made
holy wherever you have trod;
By the firm pulse of it, and by its silent-dropping dark tears;
By its weakness and by its immortal strength;
By the love with which it encloses, in which it continually laves you;
By you greater yourselves; and by the love which I see flowing surely
from you to me;
By these I put all evil aside
And I approach you, nearer, nearer—even so nearer than all thought—
And remain with you, doubting fearing nothing.
* * * * *
For fear I put away from you, and the wretched unrest of the world;
And from the Maya of appearances I deliver you: believe me here is
deliverance;
[And not here only, in this inch of space and time, but wherever....]—
And I show you the inheritance of the riches of all time.
* * * * *
Yet sorrow, the gift of gifts, revealer of eternal joy, I give you not;
But One shall come in the night-time, bringing it, to transmute the
world for you,
Taking you by the hand, even while you live, through the great gate of
Death into Elysian fields.
There as the nightingale through the night beside his mate sings,
In the soft dark—filled with the spirit of the stars and of the flowing
river and the wafted fragrance of the fields: the sunlit memories of the
day about him, and above him his own voice in the clear height poised
unfaltering—
So in perfect contentment thro’ all your mortal work
Shall your spirit sublimely sing.
AS ONE WHO FROM A HIGH CLIFF
I look upon my life as from afar:
I hear its murmur, mark its changeful sheen,
(As one who from a high cliff marks the waves
He just now rode on,)
Beautiful, gleaming, shot with hues from heaven,
With strange pale lustre—beautiful indeed,
O God, from this great eminence of Death.
TO ONE IN TROUBLE
The Lord of heaven and earth, out of darkness, out of silence, by ways
that thou understandest not, shall redeem thy soul.
THESE WAVES OR YOUR GREAT HEART
You battling with your own heart, speaking the words of peace in vain,—
* * * * *
The convulsive waves heave and break, do they not?
They go moaning down the dark shore, bitterly, unabating,
Heavily with weary thud falling falling—into the darkness falling.
* * * * *
O heart!
This is the ocean that is broken (on its surface) with measureless
never-ending unrest.
O heart!
This is the wide and immense ocean: over which who shall sail?
O child!
You that shiver there in the night-wind by the dread white-lipped shore!
Do you guess how wide this Ocean is?
Do you know how it rolls its waters away beyond the farthest horizon
that you have imagined?
Afar, afar—spreading blue beneath the sun by coasts of calm and tropic
beauty, by coasts of tumbling laughing beauty, by bays and bars and
river-narrow straits?—
This ocean of the heart?—
Afar, afar—or bearing on its breast the great white-sailed ships of the
earth, or the broad disc of the moon, or the images of men’s homes in
unimagined lands?
* * * * *
Thought you, frail phantom roaming by the shore,
Gazing wide into the night—a stranger where you had fancied yourself
most at home—
Thought you that this great Ocean was to be like an ornamental water in
your garden?
Thought you that you knew whence these convulsive waves?—the winds that
stirred them, the deeps where they were born?
Think you they weep your sorrows alone, or shake the ground only under
your feet?
* * * * *
Not so! not so!
But ever flowing from afar,
From the immeasurable past, from the illimitable shores of human life
for ever flowing—on its margin passionately breaking,
With strange uncipherable meanings, whose words are the myriad years,
With speechless terror and amazement to the children beside it,
With amazement of expanded identity, and the inflow of immortal
swift-riding purposes, incontrollable, leading straight to death,
In living procession out of the deep—O child! to you they come,
These waves of your great heart, rolling flowing without end:
Through long long ages, under storm and sunshine, by day and night, in
indomitable splendor rolling,
At your feet now mournfully breaking.
THUS AS I YEARNED FOR LOVE
Thus as I yearned for love,
At length the clouds parted,
And I knew the old old vision:
Him with the sorrowful eyes (pain, unrelenting pain),
With the distant piercing unapproachable eyes, I knew,—
The face from the murky clouds disclosed, and withdrawn again.
* * * * *
O night, fold upon fold, impenetrable, with silent tears in the darkness
falling—mute night, remover of all evidence!
O dawn, with early rising almost before it is light, and preparations
for a long journey!
O day, with children playing by the roadside, and greetings exchanged,
and cheery demeanor!
* * * * *
And somewhere, unseen, over all, the same unapproachable eyes looking as
ever down.
ETERNAL HUNGER
Eternal Hunger! O through the black night
Rave, Winds. The forest fanes
Tremble, rock, crash, and ring incessantly
The cry of homeless spirits. Roar
Ye torrents from the mountains. Roar O Sea,
Rave under the pale stars. O gulf of Death
Yawn blackening beneath.
But O great Heart,
O Love greater than all,
Over the mountains the forests and the seas,
O’er the black chasm of death, in spectral haste
Thou ridest, and the hungry winds and waves
Are but Thy hounds: Thou the eternal huntsman!
Great heart and lonely, indomitable in pride
As the pale Titan! a storm-battling eagle
Art thou above the promontory of the world;
Aý, and ah me!
A tender little bird
Wind-blown and baffled from its nest for ever.
Pain, ah! eternal pain.
I hear Aeolian harpings wail and die
Down forest glades, and through the hearts of men,
Pain, pain, eternal pain!
High round the cloud-girt pinnacle of gaunt snow
I hear the wind moan Pain, eternal pain.
O man, O child of Man!
Thou frail and baffled bird, thou weary thing,
Thou strong to suffer, of satanic pride,
I take thee up into this height of pain,
And shew thee all the kingdoms of the earth,
Yea, all the kingdoms of the hearts of men—
The pure and light-strewn kingdoms of strong love:
Gaze long in silence, friend; gaze long for all are thine.
CHILD OF THE LONELY HEART
Child of the lonely heart,
O clinging supplicating soul,
Through thy chamber, thy prison, thy palace, the body, solitary roaming,
The great world through the windows sadly, questioningly exploring.—
_O love, love, love,
At thy feet,
By thy side,
My hand if only resting in thine:
See, I am so little, I ask so little—
If thou wilt take this little overflowing cup
Into thy great ocean._
_O love, love, love,
Thee alone.
Always only thee: I find nothing beautiful but thee.
Lo! when I look forth, what is it all?
These lines of houses,
This sad interminable sky,
This gay life—which is my pretext—but underneath I am sick sick at heart
For one touch of true love._
_O love, love, love,
Since I was a little child, and till I die, the same.
Nothing I reserve—
I am so little and I ask so little:
If thou wilt take this little overflowing cup
Into thy great ocean._
Child of the lonely heart,
O clinging supplicating soul,
Through thy chamber, thy prison, thy palace—
Ah! children, through the world, through the ages, by thousands and
thousands, by millions and millions,
Unaware, unwhispered—in your own great fellowship uninitiate—
Blindly yearning, tentatively questioningly darkly exploring,
Through the great Mother-heart eternally ascending!
TO ONE WHO IS WHERE THE ETERNAL ARE
Pass friend pass:
Lest body and soul with desire I be consumed,
Pass, pass from me.
Your eyes burn in upon me. Out of the night,
Out of the darks of time, flashing, out of the still
Still height I cannot attain to, solemnly
Stedfastly gazing—
Their light pierces my brain.
O this is cruel!
Knowing that I cannot attain,
Why do you mock me?—passing me like a shadow,
Passing, passing, and again returning;
In the night within me like a great star shining,
In the world without passing me like a shadow.
If I were the yellow sands your feet once trod,
By the deep blue where they were still delaying;
Were I the sea that clipped your body round,
The shores, the ships,—
Ah me!—
Were I the thing your hand most idly touched,
The light that fell upon your Southern home,
The murmur of the forest in your ears,
Where you, friend, once walked, dreaming!
Time answers like the closing of a door,
I am an exile. The swift years have set
Their gulf between us—you are safe from me;
Torment me then no longer: pass O pass,
Kiss me with shadowy lips, and pass from me.
I see the deep gulf roll below me now—
The leaden-colored flood, the scum, the swirl,
The shadow-peopled banks.
I feel the cold dank wind: Death blows upon it.
I reel upon the edge—
Sickness comes o’er me, clammy faintness, death.
2
Now am I near to Death.
The world for me is changed. The noiseless wing
Sways over all. The mountains are unreal,
The stones I walk on are not stones, the air
Breathes from another world, the voices call,
The hands I grasp remind me. All is still,
Still as deep night within. Without, the world
Hangs beautiful and distant like a vision.
Hush! all is silent.—
Now it is very near.
Noiselessly through the darkness, noiselessly
Gliding—ah! nearer nearer!
Softly out of the night, with soft step stealing
Nearer, ah, nearer!
With faint breath over Ocean, fresh and cool,
Death! death! O friend,
O far-infolder, speak! Is it Thou indeed
Pouring faint fragrance, drowning drowning me
Out of the world at length?—at length O friend,
O hesitating long!
Ah! let me die!
Snatch me thou Wonderful,
Thou with Almighty arms, enfold me, crush me
Close through all creature-pain at length to Thee.
3
The passion is gone past.
Now know I that death has been near me all my life—that it is a part of
my life.
[O beautiful Ocean! O dim fluid plains and aerial distances!
O headland where I stand for ever gazing!]
The passion is gone past.
O friend, pale friend, stay with me now I pray.
Your eyes no more
Out of the dark consume me—fitfully flashing
Where the great waves break, weary without end.
Swaying swaying, softly eternally swaying,
The flood lies calm now. Stay with me then I pray.
Dwell with me through the day;
And through the night, and where it is neither night nor day,
Dwell quietly. Pass pass not any more.
Thou canst not pass.
I too am where thou art: through all this life
I walk the quiet kingdoms of the dead
Fast hand in hand with thee.
Press now the sweet life of thy lips on mine;
I hold thee fast:
Not by the yellow sands nor the blue deep,
But in my heart thy heart of hearts—
A great star, growing, shining.
THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT
You, proud curve-lipped youth, with brown sensitive face,
Why, suddenly, as you sat there on the grass, did you turn full upon me
those twin black eyes of yours,
With gaze so absorbing so intense, I a strong man trembled and was
faint?
Why in a moment between me and you in the full summer afternoon did Love
sweep—leading after it in procession across the lawn and the flowers and
under the waving trees huge dusky shadows of Death and the other world?
I know not.
Solemn and dewy-passionate, yet burning clear and stedfast at the last,
Through the long night those eyes of yours, dear, remain to me—
And I remain gazing into them.
TO A STRANGER
O faithful eyes, day after day as I see and know you—unswerving faithful
and beautiful—going about your ordinary work unnoticed,
I have noticed—I do not forget you.
I know the truth the tenderness the courage, I know the longings hidden
quiet there.
Go right on. Have good faith yet—keep that your unseen treasure
untainted.
Many shall bless you. To many yet, though no word be spoken, your face
shall shine as a lamp.
It shall be remembered, and that which you have desired—in silence—shall
come abundantly to you.
TO A FRIEND
Faithful eyes, fail not.
Though sorrows come upon you, though temptations try, though age and
grief assault you—fail not, fail not.
How many hang upon you for your light,
Shining in darkness—as the stars that shine
Upon the mighty deep for mariners!
O eyes, be true, give all away for that—
Give all your days and all good name and honor,
If need should be, for that. That we may steer
Through the dark night by you.
OF THE LOVE THAT YOU POURED FORTH
Of the love that you poured forth, dear friend, in vain—like a cup of
water in the wide and thirsty desert—but it was all your life to you,
Do you dream that it is lost?
Perhaps it is—it may well seem so just now to you—yet indeed I do not
think so.
AS A WOMAN OF A MAN
Democracy!
O sombre swart face, now thou art very beautiful to me!
O haughty brow, with glittering withdrawn eyes, not a little
contemptuous,
Thou art very beautiful to me!
* * * * *
I am as a child before thee;
All that I have learned, all my fancical knowledge,
My familiarity with times and distances,
All my refinement is nothing—my delicate hands, manners,
My glibness is nothing;
I crave the touch of thy soul, thou strong one,
I crave thy love.
* * * * *
Come! who art no longer a name:
Gigantic Thou, with head aureoled by the sun—wild among the mountains—
Thy huge limbs naked and stalwart erected member,
Thy lawless gait and rank untameable laughter,
Thy heaven-licking wildfire thoughts and passions—
I desire.
* * * * *
All conventions, luxuries, all refinements of civilization, and
tyrannous wants,
Acquisitions, formulated rules, rights, prescriptions, and whatever
constitutes a barrier—
I discard.
* * * * *
All the cobwebs of science, and precedents and conclusions of authority,
All possessions, and impedimenta of property, all rights of bundles and
baggage—
I disown.
* * * * *
I stand prepared for toil, for hardship—this instant if need be to start
on an unforeseen and distant journey—
I am wholly without reserve:
As a woman of a man so I will learn of thee,
I will draw thee closer and closer,
I will drain thy lips and the secret things of thy body,
I will conceive by thee, Democracy.
O LOVE—TO WHOM THE POETS
O love—to whom the poets have made verses—
Whom the shepherds on the hills have piped to, and maidens sighed within
their lonely bowers,
Whom the minstrels have sung, handing down their songs from one
generation to another—
To thy praise over the world resounding
I add my strain.
* * * * *
Not because thou art fair;
Not because thine eyes glance winningly, nor because of the sly arch of
thine eyebrows;
Not because thy voice is like music played in the open air,
And thy coming like the dawn on the far-off mountains;
Not because thou comest with the dance and the song, and because the
flashing of thy feet is like the winds of Spring;
Nor because thou art sweetly perfumed,
Do I praise thee.
* * * * *
Not because thy dwelling is among knights and ladies—afar from all that
is common or gross;
Not because thou delayest to the sound of playing fountains on marble
terraces,
And white hands caress thee and clip thy wing-feathers,
And meek thoughts and blameless conversation attend thee;
Not because thy place is among the flowers and the wine-cups in spacious
halls,
And because the sight of Death appals thee;
Nor because, love, thou art a child:
* * * * *
But because as on me now, full-grown giantesque out of the ground out of
the common earth arising,
Very awful and terrible in heaven thou appearest;
Because as thou comest to me in thy majesty sweeping over the world with
lightnings and black darkness,
[And the old order shrivels and disappears from thy face,]
I am as a leaf borne, as a fragrance exhaled before thee—
As a bird crying singed by the prairie-fire;
Because Thou rulest O glorious, and before thee all else fails,
And at thy dread new command—at thy new word Democracy—the children of
the earth and the sea and the sky find their voices, and the despised
things come forth and rejoice;
Because in thy arms O strong one I laugh Death to scorn—nay I go forth
to meet him with gladness;
Ay, because thou takest away from me all strength but thine own,
Because thou takest all doubt and power of resistance,
Because out of disallowed and unaccepted things—and always out of
these—full-armed and terrific,
Like a smiting and consuming flame, O Love, O Democracy,
Even out of the faces and bodies of the huge and tameless multitudes of
the Earth,
A great ocean of fire with myriad tongues licking the vault of heaven,
Thou arisest—
Therefore O love O flame wherein I burning die and am consumed, carried
aloft to the stars a disembodied voice—
O dread Creator and Destroyer,
Do I praise Thee.
WHO YOU ARE I KNOW NOT
Who you are I know not, but I have it before me that you shall know.
For a certainty you are not greater or less than me: I neither look upon
you with envy nor with pity, with deference nor with contempt.
Endowments and dignities and accomplishments are of no account whatever;
but honesty, and to stand in time under the great law of Equality—after
which you will be satisfied, and joy will take possession of you.
Till then, farewell. Do not follow me, but go your own way voyaging—and
then haply some time we shall meet.
HAVE FAITH
Do not hurry: have faith.
Remember that if you become famous you can never share the lot of those
who pass by unnoticed from the cradle to the grave, nor take part in the
last heroism of their daily life;
If you seek and encompass wealth and ease the divine outlook of poverty
cannot be yours—nor shall you feel all your days the loving and
constraining touch of Nature and Necessity;
If you are successful in all you do, you cannot also battle
magnificently against odds;
If you have fortune and good health and a loving wife and children, you
cannot also be of those who are happy without these things.
* * * * *
Covet not overmuch. Let the strong desires come and go; refuse them not,
disown them not; but think not that in them lurks finally the thing you
want.
Presently they will fade away and into the intolerable light will
dissolve like gossamers before the sun.
2
Do not hurry: have faith.
The sportsman does not say, I will start a hare at the corner of this
field, or I will shoot a turkey-buzzard at the foot of that tree;
But he stands indifferent and waits on emergency, and so makes himself
master of it.
So do you stand indifferent, and by faith make yourself master of your
life.
For all things are possible, yet at any one time and place only one
thing is possible;
And all things are good, yet at any one time and place can you extract
the good only from that which is before you.
Have faith. If that which rules the universe were alien to your soul,
then nothing could mend your state—there were nothing left but to fold
your hands and be damned everlastingly.
But since it is not so—why what can you wish for more?—all things are
given into your hands.
Do you pity a man who having a silver mine on his estate loses a
shilling in a crack in his house-floor?
And why should another pity you?
3
Do not hurry.
As at the first day the clouds suffused with light creep over the edges
of the hills, the young poplar poises itself like an arrow planted in
the ground, the birds warble with upturned bills to the sun;
The sun rises on hundreds of millions of human beings; the hemisphere of
light follows the hemisphere of darkness, and a great wave of life
rushes round the globe;
The little pigmies stand on end (like iron filings under a magnet) and
then they fall prone again. And this has gone on for millions of years
and will go on for millions more.
* * * * *
Absolve yourself to-day from the bonds of action.
[Wait, wait ever for the coming of the Lord. See that you are ready for
his arrival.]
Begin to-day to understand that which you will not understand when you
read these words for the first time, nor perhaps when you have read them
for the hundredth time.
Begin to-day to understand why the animals are not hurried, and do not
concern themselves about affairs, nor the clouds nor the trees nor the
stars—but only man—and he but for a few thousand years in history.
[For it is one thing to do things, but another to be concerned about the
doing of them.]
Behold the animals. There is not one but the human soul lurks within it,
fulfilling its destiny as surely as within you.
The elephant, the gnat floating warily towards its victim, the horse
sleeping by stolen snatches in the hot field at the plough, or coming
out of the stable of its own accord at the sound of the alarm bell and
placing itself in the shafts of the fire-engine—sharing the excitement
of the men; the cats playing together on the barn floor, thinking no
society equal to theirs, the ant bearing its burden through the grass—
Do you think that these are nothing more than what you see? Do you not
know that your mother and your sister and your brother are among them?
4
I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me.
I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned
for awhile to roam fourfooted among the brambles. I caught the clinging
mute glance of the prisoner, and swore that I would be faithful.
Thee my brother and sister I see and mistake not. Do not be afraid.
Dwelling thus and thus for a while, fulfilling thy appointed time—thou
too shalt come to thyself at last.
Thy half-warm horns and long tongue lapping round my wrist do not
conceal thy humanity any more than the learned talk of the pedant
conceals his—for all thou art dumb we have words and plenty between us.
Come nigh little bird with your half-stretched quivering wings—within
you I behold choirs of angels, and the Lord himself in vista.
Crooning and content the old hen sits—her thirteen chicks cheep cheerily
round her, or nestle peeping out like little buds from under her wings;
Keen and motherly is her eye, placid and joyful her heart, as the sun
shines warm upon them.
5
Do not hurry: have faith.
[Whither indeed should we hurry? is it not well here?
A little shelter from the storm, a stack of fuel for winter use, a few
handfuls of grain and fruit—
And lo! the glory of all the earth is ours.]
The main thing is that the messenger is perhaps even now at your
door—and to see that you are ready for his arrival:
A little child, a breath of air, an old man hobbling on crutches, a bee
lighting on the page of your book—who knows whom He may send?
Some one diseased or dying, some friendless, outcast, criminal—
One whom it shall ruin your reputation to be seen with—yet see that you
are ready for his arrival.
* * * * *
Likely whoever it is his coming will upset all your carefully laid
plans;
Your most benevolent designs will likely have to be laid aside, and he
will set you to some quite commonplace business, or perhaps of dubious
character—
Or send you a long and solitary journey; perhaps he will bring you
letters of trust to deliver—perhaps the prince himself will appear—
Yet see that you are ready for his arrival.
* * * * *
Is your present experience hard to bear?
Yet remember that never again perhaps in all your days will you have
another chance of the same.
Do not fly the lesson, but have a care that you master it while you have
the opportunity.
6
These things I say not in order to excite thought in you—rather to
destroy it—
Or if to excite thought, then to excite that which destroys itself;
For what I say is not born of thought and does not demand thought either
for comprehension or proof;
And whoever dwells among thoughts dwells in the region of delusion and
disease—and though he may appear wise and learned yet his wisdom and
learning are as hollow as a piece of timber eaten out by white ants.
Therefore though thought should gird you about, remember and forget not
to disendue it, as a man takes off his coat when hot; and as a skilful
workman lays down his tool when done with, so shall you use thought and
lay it quietly aside again when it has served your purpose.
7
A veil of illusion hangs following the lines of all things,
Over the trees and running waters, and up the sides of the mountains and
over the sea and the cities, and circling the birds in the air as they
fly—
So that these themselves you see not, only the indications of them, and
yourself you see not, only the indication.
As long as through the eyes of desire, and of this and that, you
look—and of vanity; as long as you hurry after results and are
overwhelmed with the importance of anything you can do or leave
undone—so long will the veil lie close, do not be deceived.
* * * * *
On all sides God surrounds you, staring out upon you from the mountains
and from the face of the rocks, and of men, and of animals.
Will you rush past for ever insensate and blindfold—hurrying breathless
from one unfinished task to another, and to catch your ever-departing
trains—as if you were a very Cain flying from his face?
* * * * *
Resume the ancient dignity of your race, lost, almost forgotten as it
is.
What is it surely that you are fretting about? Is it the fashions, or
what men say about you, or the means of livelihood, or is it the sense
of duty this way and that, or trivial desires, that will not let you
rest?
Are you so light, like a leaf, that such things as these will move
you—are you so weak that one such slender chain will deprive you of
inestimable Freedom?
And yet the lilies of the field and the beasts that have no banks of
deposit or securities are not anxious: they have more dignity than you.
* * * * *
As long as you harbor motives so long are you giving hostages to the
enemy; while you are a slave (to this and that) you can only obey. It is
not You who are acting at all.
Brush it all aside.
Pass disembodied out of yourself. Leave the husk, leave the long long
prepared and perfected envelope.
Enter into the life which is eternal, pass through the gate of
indifference into the palace of mastery, through the door of love out
into the great open of deliverance;
Give away all that you have, become poor and without possessions—and
behold! you shall be lord and sovereign of all things.
I HEARD A VOICE
I heard a voice say unto me:—
Now since thou art neither beautiful nor witty, it is in vain that thou
hangest about the doors of the admired palaces;
For thou wilt not gain admission—thou!
* * * * *
But here outside is a plot of waste ground where canst build thee a
little cabin—all thine own;
And since it is close by the common road and there is no fence about it,
Many a weary traveler parched with the heat of the day shall turn in
unto thee for a cup of cold water.
And that shall suffice for Thy life.
I KNOW THAT YOU ARE SELF-CONSCIOUS
I know that you are self-conscious,
That you are troubled—haunted—tormented. It is not pleasant!
* * * * *
But how wonderful is the mere sense of space in the world—after the
sick-chamber and days of illness!
And how wonderful is the sense of measureless space in the soul, and of
freedom, thenceforth inalienable!
Look then in the glass once more, and satisfy yourself thoroughly about
it:
Do you not see, this time, that there is some one else looking in it
also,
Beside you, over your shoulder?
WHO ARE YOU
Who are you who go about to save them that are lost?
Are you saved yourself?
* * * * *
Do you not know that who would save his own life must lose it?
Are you then one of the ‘lost’?
* * * * *
Be sure, very sure, that each one of these can teach you as much as,
probably more than, you can teach them.
Have you then sat humbly at their feet, and waited on their lips that
they should be the first to speak—and been reverent before these
children—whom you so little understand?
Have you dropped into the bottomless pit from between yourself and them
all hallucination of superiority, all flatulence of knowledge, every
shred of abhorrence and loathing?
Is it equal, is it free as the wind between you?
Could you be happy receiving favors from one of the most despised of
these?
Could you be yourself one of the lost?
* * * * *
Arise, then, and become a savior.
AMONG THE FERNS
I lay among the ferns,
Where they lifted their fronds, innumerable, in the greenwood
wilderness, like wings winnowing the air;
And their voices went past me continually.
* * * * *
And I listened, and lo! softly inaudibly raining I heard not the voices
of the ferns only, but of all living creatures:
Voices of mountain and star,
Of cloud and forest and ocean,
And of the little rills tumbling amid the rocks,
And of the high tops where the moss-beds are and the springs arise.
As the wind at mid-day rains whitening over the grass,
As the night-bird glimmers a moment, fleeting between the lonely watcher
and the moon,
So softly inaudibly they rained,
Where I sat silent.
* * * * *
And in the silence of the greenwood I knew the secret of the growth of
the ferns;
I saw their delicate leaflets tremble breathing an undescribed and
unuttered life;
And, below, the ocean lay sleeping;
And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in glad companionship
for ever.
* * * * *
And a voice came to me, saying:
In every creature, in forest and ocean, in leaf and tree and bird and
beast and man, there moves a spirit other than its mortal own,
Pure, fluid, as air—intense as fire,
Which looks abroad and passes along the spirits of all other creatures,
drawing them close to itself,
Nor dreams of other law than that of perfect equality;
And this is the spirit of immortality and peace.
* * * * *
And whatsoever creature hath this spirit, to it no harm may befall:
No harm can befall, for wherever it goes it has its nested home, and to
it every loss comes charged with an equal gain;
It gives—but to receive a thousand-fold;
It yields its life—but at the hands of love;
And death is the law of its eternal growth.
* * * * *
And I saw that was the law of every creature—that this spirit should
enter in and take possession of it,
That it might have no more fear or doubt or be at war within itself any
longer.
And lo! in the greenwood all around me it moved,
Where the sunlight floated fragrant under the boughs, and the
fern-fronds winnowed the air;
In the oak-leaves dead of last year, and in the small shy things that
rustled among them;
In the songs of the birds, and the broad shadowing leaves overhead;
In the fields sleeping below, and in the river and the high dreaming
air;
Gleaming ecstatic it moved—with joy incarnate.
And it seemed to me, as I looked, that it penetrated all these things,
suffusing them;
And wherever it penetrated, behold! there was nothing left down to the
smallest atom which was not a winged spirit instinct with life.
* * * * *
Who shall understand the words of the ferns lifting their fronds
innumerable?
What man shall go forth into the world, holding his life in his open
palm—
With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sunset—
Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his enemies?
His heart like Nature’s garden—that all men abide in—
Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall, and the sun shines,
And manifold growths come forth and scatter their fragrance?
Who shall be like a grave, where men may bury
Sin and sorrow and shame, to rise in the new day
Glorious out of their grave? who, deeply listening,
Shall hear through his soul the voices of all creation,
Voices of mountain and star, voices of all men,