III

I very soon had enough of it.

The hot smell and the human noises,

And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it,

Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises,

Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure

Of the preaching man's immense stupidity,

As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure,

To meet his audience's avidity.

You needed not the wit of the Sibyl

To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling:

No sooner our friend had got an inkling

Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible,

(Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him,

How death, at unawares, might duck him

Deeper than the grave, and quench

The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench)

Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,

As to hug the book of books to pieces:

And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,

Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases,

Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,--

So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.

And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:

Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors

Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors

Were help which the world could be saved without,

'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet

A qualm or two at my spiritual diet,

Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered

Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:

But the flock sat on, divinely flustered,

Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon

With such content in every snuffle,

As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.

My old fat woman purred with pleasure,

And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,

While she, to his periods keeping measure,

Maternally devoured the pastor.

The man with the handkerchief untied it,

Showed us a horrible wen inside it,

Gave his eyelids yet another screwing,

And rocked himself as the woman was doing.

The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking,

Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking!

My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it;

So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,

"I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it,"

I flung out of the little chapel.

IV

There was a lull in the rain, a lull

In the wind too; the moon was risen,

And would have shone out pure and full,

But for the ramparted cloud-prison,

Block on block built up in the West,

For what purpose the wind knows best,

Who changes his mind continually.

And the empty other half of the sky

Seemed in its silence as if it knew

What, any moment, might look through

A chance gap in that fortress massy:--

Through its fissures you got hints

Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,

Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy

Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,

Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow,

All a-simmer with intense strain

To let her through,--then blank again,

At the hope of her appearance failing.

Just by the chapel a break in the railing

Shows a narrow path directly across;

'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss--

Besides, you go gently all the way up-hill.

I stooped under and soon felt better;

My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple,

As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter.

My mind was full of the scene I had left,

That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,

--How this outside was pure and different!

The sermon, now--what a mingled weft

Of good and ill! Were either less,

Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly;

But alas for the excellent earnestness,

And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,

But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,

However to pastor and flock's contentment!

Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,

With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,

Till how could you know them, grown double their size

In the natural fog of the good man's mind,

Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,

Haloed about with the common's damps?

Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover;

The zeal was good, and the aspiration;

And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,

Pharaoh received no demonstration,

By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three,

Of the doctrine of the Trinity,--

Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,

Apparently his hearers relished it

With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if

They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?

But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!

These people have really felt, no doubt,

A something, the motion they style the Call of them;

And this is their method of bringing about,

By a mechanism of words and tones,

(So many texts in so many groans)

A sort of reviving and reproducing,

More or less perfectly, (who can tell?)

The mood itself, which strengthens by using;

And how that happens, I understand well.

A tune was born in my head last week,

Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek

Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;

And when, next week, I take it back again,

My head will sing to the engine's clack again,

While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir,

--Finding no dormant musical sprout

In him, as in me, to be jolted out.

'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching;

He gets no more from the railway's preaching

Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I:

Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on.

Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion,"

To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

V

But wherefore be harsh on a single case?

After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,

Does the self-same weary thing take place?

The same endeavor to make you believe,

And with much the same effect, no more:

Each method abundantly convincing,

As I say, to those convinced before,

But scarce to be swallowed without wincing

By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,

I have my own church equally:

And in this church my faith sprang first!

(I said, as I reached the rising ground,

And the wind began again, with a burst

Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

I entered his church-door, nature leading me)

--In youth I looked to these very skies,

And probing their immensities,

I found God there, his visible power;

Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

Of the power, an equal evidence

That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.

For the loving worm within its clod

Were diviner than a loveless god

Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

You know what I mean: God's all, man's naught:

But also, God, whose pleasure brought

Man into being, stands away

As it were a handbreadth off, to give

Room for the newly-made to live,

And look at him from a place apart,

And use his gifts of brain and heart,

Given, indeed, but to keep forever.

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever

Man's very elements from man,

Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan

Was to create man and then leave him

Able, his own word saith, to grieve him,

But able to glorify him too,

As a mere machine could never do,

That prayed or praised, all unaware

Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer.

Made perfect as a thing of course.

Man, therefore, stands on his own stock

Of love and power as a pin-point rock:

And, looking to God who ordained divorce

Of the rock from his boundless continent,

Sees, in his power made evident,

Only excess by a million-fold

O'er the power God gave man in the mould.

For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry

A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry

Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain,

--Advancing in power by one degree;

And why count steps through eternity?

But love is the ever-springing fountain:

Man may enlarge or narrow his bed

For the water's play, but the water-head--

How can he multiply or reduce it?

As easy create it, as cause it to cease;

He may profit by it, or abuse it,

But 't is not a thing to bear increase

As power does: be love less or more

In the heart of man, he keeps it shut

Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but

Love's sum remains what it was before.

So, gazing up, in my youth, at love

As seen through power, ever above

All modes which make it manifest,

My soul brought all to a single test--

That he, the Eternal First and Last,

Who, in his power, had so surpassed

All man conceives of what is might,--

Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,

--Would prove as infinitely good;

Would never, (my soul understood,)

With power to work all love desires,

Bestow e'en less than man requires;

That he who endlessly was teaching,

Above my spirit's utmost reaching,

What love can do in the leaf or stone,

(So that to master this alone,

This done in the stone or leaf for me,

I must go on learning endlessly)

Would never need that I, in turn,

Should point him out defect unheeded,

And show that God had yet to learn

What the meanest human creature needed,

--Not life, to wit, for a few short years,

Tracking his way through doubts and fears,

While the stupid earth on which I stay

Suffers no change, but passive adds

Its myriad years to myriads,

Though I, he gave it to, decay,

Seeing death come and choose about me,

And my dearest ones depart without me.

No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,

Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,

The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,

Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.

And I shall behold thee, face to face,

O God, and in thy light retrace

How in all I loved here, still wast thou!

Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,

I shall find as able to satiate

The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder

Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,

With this sky of thine, that I now walk under

And glory in thee for, as I gaze

Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways

Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine--

Be this my way! And this is mine!

VI

For lo, what think you? suddenly

The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky

Received at once the full fruition

Of the moon's consummate apparition.

The black cloud-barricade was riven,

Ruined beneath her feet, and driven

Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless,

North and South and East lay ready

For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless,

Sprang across them and stood steady.

'T was a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,

From heaven to heaven extending, perfect

As the mother-moon's self, full in face.

It rose, distinctly at the base

With its seven proper colors chorded,

Which still, in the rising, were compressed,

Until at last they coalesced,

And supreme the spectral creature lorded

In a triumph of whitest white,--

Above which intervened the night.

But above night too, like only the next,

The second of a wondrous sequence,

Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,

Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed,

Another rainbow rose, a mightier,

Fainter, flushier and flightier,--

Rapture dying along its verge.

Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,

Whose, from the straining topmost dark,

On to the keystone of that arc?

VII

This sight was shown me, there and then,--

Me, one out of a world of men,

Singled forth, as the chance might hap

To another if, in a thunderclap

Where I heard noise and you saw flame,

Some one man knew God called his name.

For me, I think I said, "Appear!

Good were it to be ever here.

If thou wilt, let me build to thee

Service-tabernacles three,

Where, forever in thy presence,

In ecstatic acquiescence,

Far alike from thriftless learning

And ignorance's undiscerning,

I may worship and remain!"

Thus at the show above me, gazing

With upturned eyes, I felt my brain

Glutted with the glory, blazing

Throughout its whole mass, over and under,

Until at length it burst asunder

And out of it bodily there streamed,

The too-much glory, as it seemed,

Passing from out me to the ground,

Then palely serpentining round

Into the dark with mazy error.

VIII

All at once I looked up with terror.

He was there.

He himself with his human air,

On the narrow pathway, just before.

I saw the back of him, no more--

He had left the chapel, then, as I.

I forgot all about the sky.

No face: only the sight

Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,

With a hem that I could recognize.

I felt terror, no surprise;

My mind filled with the cataract

At one bound of the mighty fact.

"I remember, he did say

Doubtless that, to this world's end,

Where two or three should meet and pray,

He would be in the midst, their friend;

Certainly he was there with them!"

And my pulses leaped for joy

Of the golden thought without alloy,

That I saw his very vesture's hem.

Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,

With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;

And I hastened, cried out while I pressed

To the salvation of the vest,

"But not so, Lord! It cannot be

That thou, indeed, art leaving me--

Me, that have despised thy friends!

Did my heart make no amends?

Thou art the love of God--above

His power, didst hear me place his love,

And that was leaving the world for thee.

Therefore thou must not turn from me

As I had chosen the other part!

Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.

Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;

Still, it should be our very best.

I thought it best that thou, the spirit,

Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,

And in beauty, as even we require it--

Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,

I left but now, as scarcely fitted

For thee: I knew not what I pitied.

But, all I felt there, right or wrong,

What is it to thee, who curest sinning?

Am I not weak as thou art strong?

I have looked to thee from the beginning,

Straight up to thee through all the world

Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled

To nothingness on either side:

And since the time thou wast descried,

Spite of the weak heart, so have I

Lived ever, and so fain would die,

Living and dying, thee before!

But if thou leavest me"--

IX

Less or more,

I suppose that I spoke thus.

When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!

The whole face turned upon me full.

And I spread myself beneath it,

As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it

In the cleansing sun, his wool,--

Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness

Some defiled, discolored web--

So lay I, saturate with brightness,

And when the flood appeared to ebb,

Lo, I was walking, light and swift,

With my senses settling fast and steadying,

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift

Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying

On, just before me, still to be followed,

As it carried me after with its motion:

What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed

And a man went weltering through the ocean,

Sucked along in the flying wake

Of the luminous water-snake.

Darkness and cold were cloven, as through

I passed, upborne yet walking too.

And I turned to myself at intervals,--

"So he said, so it befalls.

God who registers the cup

Of mere cold water, for his sake

To a disciple rendered up,

Disdains not his own thirst to slake

At the poorest love was ever offered:

And because my heart I proffered,

With true love trembling at the brim,

He suffers me to follow him

Forever, my own way,--dispensed

From seeking to be influenced

By all the less immediate ways

That earth, in worships manifold,

Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,

The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"

X

And so we crossed the world and stopped.

For where am I, in city or plain,

Since I am 'ware of the world again?

And what is this that rises propped

With pillars of prodigious girth?

Is it really on the earth,

This miraculous Dome of God?

Has the angel's measuring-rod

Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,

'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,

Meted it out,--and what he meted,

Have the sons of men completed?

--Binding, ever as he bade,

Columns in the colonnade

With arms wide open to embrace

The entry of the human race

To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,

Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,

With marble for brick, and stones of price

For garniture of the edifice?

Now I see; it is no dream;

It stands there and it does not seem:

Forever, in pictures, thus it looks,

And thus I have read of it in books

Often in England, leagues away,

And wondered how these fountains play,

Growing up eternally

Each to a musical water-tree,

Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,

Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,

To the granite lavers underneath.

Liar and dreamer in your teeth!

I, the sinner that speak to you,

Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew

Both this and more. For see, for see,

The dark is rent, mine eye is free

To pierce the crust of the outer wall,

And I view inside, and all there, all,

As the swarming hollow of a hive,

The whole Basilica alive!

Men in the chancel, body and nave,

Men on the pillars' architrave,

Men on the statues, men on the tombs

With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,

All famishing in expectation

Of the main altar's consummation.

For see, for see, the rapturous moment

Approaches, and earth's best endowment

Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires

Pant up, the winding brazen spires

Heave loftier yet the baldachin;

The incense-gaspings, long kept in,

Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant

Holds his breath and grovels latent,

As if God's hushing finger grazed him,

(Like Behemoth when he praised him)

At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,

Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling

On the sudden pavement strewed

With faces of the multitude.

Earth breaks up, time drops away,

In flows heaven, with its new day

Of endless life, when He who trod,

Very man and very God,

This earth in weakness, shame and pain,

Dying the death whose signs remain

Up yonder on the accursed tree,--

Shall come again, no more to be

Of captivity the thrall,

But the one God, All in all,

King of kings, Lord of lords,

As His servant John received the words,

"I died, and live forevermore!"

XI

Yet I was left outside the door.

"Why sit I here on the threshold-stone,

Left till He return, alone

Save for the garment's extreme fold

Abandoned still to bless my hold?"

My reason, to my doubt, replied,

As if a book were opened wide,

And at a certain page I traced

Every record undefaced,

Added by successive years,--

The harvestings of truth's stray ears

Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf

Bound together for belief.

Yes, I said--that he will go

And sit with these in turn, I know.

Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims

Too giddily to guide her limbs,

Disabled by their palsy-stroke

From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke

Drops off, no more to be endured,

Her teaching is not so obscured

By errors and perversities,

That no truth shines athwart the lies:

And he, whose eye detects a spark

Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark,

May well see flame where each beholder

Acknowledges the embers smoulder.

But I, a mere man, fear to quit

The clue God gave me as most fit

To guide my footsteps through life's maze,

Because himself discerns all ways

Open to reach him: I, a man

Able to mark where faith began

To swerve aside, till from its summit

Judgment drops her damning plummet,

Pronouncing such a fatal space

Departed from the founder's base:

He will not bid me enter too,

But rather sit, as now I do,

Awaiting his return outside.

--'T was thus my reason straight replied

And joyously I turned, and pressed

The garment's skirt upon my breast,

Until, afresh its light suffusing me,

My heart cried--"What has been abusing me

That I should wait here lonely and coldly,

Instead of rising, entering boldly,

Baring truth's face, and letting drift

Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?

Do these men praise him? I will raise

My voice up to their point of praise!

I see the error; but above

The scope of error, see the love.--

Oh, love of those first Christian days!

--Fanned so soon into a blaze,

From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,

That the antique sovereign Intellect

Which then sat ruling in the world,

Like a change in dreams, was hurled

From the throne he reigned upon:

You looked up and he was gone.

Gone, his glory of the pen!

--Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,

Bade her scribes abhor the trick

Of poetry and rhetoric,

And exult with hearts set free,

In blessed imbecility

Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet

Leaving Sallust incomplete.

Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!

--Love, while able to acquaint her

While the thousand statues yet

Fresh from chisel, pictures wet

From brush, she saw on every side,

Chose rather with an infant's pride

To frame those portents which impart

Such unction to true Christian Art.

Gone, music too! The air was stirred

By happy wings: Terpander's bird

(That, when the cold came, fled away)

Would tarry not the wintry day,--

As more-enduring sculpture must,

Till filthy saints rebuked the gust

With which they chanced to get a sight

Of some dear naked Aphrodite

They glanced a thought above the toes of,

By breaking zealously her nose off.

Love, surely, from that music's lingering,

Might have filched her organ-fingering,

Nor chosen rather to set prayings

To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.

Love was the startling thing, the new:

Love was the all-sufficient too;

And seeing that, you see the rest:

As a babe can find its mother's breast

As well in darkness as in light,

Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.

True, the world's eyes are open now:

--Less need for me to disallow

Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,

Peevish as ever to be suckled,

Lulled by the same old baby-prattle

With intermixture of the rattle,

When she would have them creep, stand steady

Upon their feet, or walk already,

Not to speak of trying to climb.

I will be wise another time,

And not desire a wall between us,

When next I see a church-roof cover

So many species of one genus,

All with foreheads bearing _lover_

Written above the earnest eyes of them;

All with breasts that beat for beauty,

Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,

In noble daring, steadfast duty,

The heroic in passion, or in action,--

Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,

To the mere outside of human creatures,

Mere perfect form and faultless features.

What? with all Rome here, whence to levy

Such contributions to their appetite,

With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,

They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight

On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding

On the glories of their ancient reading,

On the beauties of their modern singing,

On the wonders of the builder's bringing,

On the majesties of Art around them,--

And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,

When faith has at last united and bound them,

They offer up to God for a present?

Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--

And, only taking the act in reference

To the other recipients who might have allowed it,

I will rejoice that God had the preference."

XII

So I summed up my new resolves:

Too much love there can never be.

And where the intellect devolves

Its function on love exclusively,

I, a man who possesses both,

Will accept the provision, nothing loth,

--Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,

That my intellect may find its share.

And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest,

And see thou applaud the great heart of the artist,

Who, examining the capabilities

Of the block of marble he has to fashion

Into a type of thought or passion,--

Not always, using obvious facilities,

Shapes it, as any artist can,

Into a perfect symmetrical man,

Complete from head to foot of the life-size,

Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,--

But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate

A Colossus by no means so easy to come at,

And uses the whole of his block for the bust,

Leaving the mind of the public to finish it,

Since cut it ruefully short he must:

On the face alone he expends his devotion,

He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it,

--Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion

Of what a face may be! As for completing it

In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!"

All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it,

A trunk and legs would perfect the statue,

Could man carve so as to answer volition.

And how much nobler than petty cavils,

Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels,

Some artist of another ambition,

Who having a block to carve, no bigger,

Has spent his power on the opposite quest,

And believed to begin at the feet was best--

For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!

XIII

No sooner said than out in the night!

My heart beat lighter and more light:

And still, as before, I was walking swift,

With my senses settling fast and steadying,

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift

Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying

On, just before me, still to be followed,

As it carried me after with its motion:

What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed,

And a man went weltering through the ocean,

Sucked along in the flying wake

Of the luminous water-snake.

XIV

Alone! I am left alone once more--

(Save for the garment's extreme fold

Abandoned still to bless my hold)

Alone, beside the entrance-door

Of a sort of temple--perhaps a college,

--Like nothing I ever saw before

At home in England, to my knowledge.

The tall old quaint irregular town!

It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any

Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;

And this flight of stairs where I sit down,

Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort,

Or Göttingen, I have to thank for 't?

It may be Göttingen,--most likely.

Through the open door I catch obliquely

Glimpses of a lecture-hall;

And not a bad assembly neither,

Ranged decent and symmetrical

On benches, waiting what 's to see there;

Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,

I also resolve to see with them,

Cautious this time how I suffer to slip

The chance of joining in fellowship

With any that call themselves his friends;

As these folks do, I have a notion.

But hist--a buzzing and emotion!

All settle themselves, the while ascends

By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,

Step by step, deliberate

Because of his cranium's over-freight,

Three parts sublime to one grotesque,

If I have proved an accurate guesser,

The hawk-nosed, high-cheekboned Professor.

I felt at once as if there ran

A shoot of love from my heart to the man--

That sallow virgin-minded studious

Martyr to mild enthusiasm,

As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious

That woke my sympathetic spasm,

(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)

And stood, surveying his auditory

With a wan pure look, wellnigh celestial,--

Those blue eyes had survived so much!

While, under the foot they could not smutch,

Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.

Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,

Till the auditory's clearing of throats

Was done with, died into a silence;

And, when each glance was upward sent,

Each bearded mouth composed intent,

And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--

He pushed back higher his spectacles,

Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells.

And giving his head of hair--a hake

Of undressed tow, for color and quantity--

One rapid and impatient shake,

(As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie

When about to impart, on mature digestion,

Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)

--The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,

Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.

XV

And he began it by observing

How reason dictated that men

Should rectify the natural swerving,

By a reversion, now and then,

To the well-heads of knowledge, few

And far away, whence rolling grew

The life-stream wide whereat we drink,

Commingled, as we needs must think,

With waters alien to the source;

To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;

Since, where could be a fitter time

For tracing backward to its prime,

This Christianity, this lake,

This reservoir, whereat we slake,

From one or other bank, our thirst?

So, he proposed inquiring first

Into the various sources whence

This Myth of Christ is derivable;

Demanding from the evidence,

(Since plainly no such life was livable)

How these phenomena should class?

Whether 't were best opine Christ was,

Or never was at all, or whether

He was and was not, both together--

It matters little for the name,

So the idea be left the same.

Only, for practical purpose' sake,

'T was obviously as well to take

The popular story,--understanding

How the ineptitude of the time,

And the penman's prejudice, expanding

Fact into fable fit for the clime,

Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it

Into this myth, this Individuum,--

Which when reason had strained and abated it

Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,

A Man!--a right true man, however,

Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor:

Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient

To his disciples, for rather believing

He was just omnipotent and omniscient,

As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving

His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant

Something entirely different

From all that those who only heard it,

In their simplicity thought and averred it,

Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:

For, among other doctrines delectable,

Was he not surely the first to insist on

The natural sovereignty of our race?--

Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.

And while his cough, like a droughty piston,

Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,

I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,

The vesture still within my hand.

XVI

I could interpret its command.

This time he would not bid me enter

The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.

Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic

When Papist struggles with Dissenter,

Impregnating its pristine clarity,

--One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,

Its gust of broken meat and garlic;

--One, by his soul's too-much presuming

To turn the frankincense's fuming

And vapors of the candle starlike

Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.

Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,

May poison it for healthy breathing--

But the Critic leaves no air to poison;

Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity

Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.

Thus much of Christ does he reject?

And what retain? His intellect?

What is it I must reverence duly?

Poor intellect for worship, truly,

Which tells me simply what was told

(If mere morality, bereft

Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)

Elsewhere by voices manifold;

With this advantage, that the stater

Made nowise the important stumble

Of adding, he, the sage and humble,

Was also one with the Creator.

You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:

But how does shifting blame evade it?

Have wisdom's words no more felicity?

The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it?

How comes it that for one found able

To sift the truth of it from fable,

Millions believe it to the letter?

Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better?

Strange goodness, which upon the score

Of being goodness, the mere due

Of man to fellow-man, much more

To God--should take another view

Of its possessor's privilege,

And bid him rule his race! You pledge

Your fealty to such rule? What, all--

From heavenly John and Attic Paul,

And that brave weather-battered Peter,

Whose stout faith only stood completer

For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,

As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--

All, down to you, the man of men,

Professing here at Göttingen,

Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,

Are sheep of a good man! And why?

The goodness,--how did he acquire it?

Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?

Choose which; then tell me, on what ground

Should its possessor dare propound

His claim to rise o'er us an inch?

Were goodness all some man's invention,

Who arbitrarily made mention

What we should follow, and whence flinch,--

What qualities might take the style

Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing

Met with as general acquiescing

As graced the alphabet erewhile,

When A got leave an Ox to be,

No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,--

For thus inventing thing and title

Worship were that man's fit requital.

But if the common conscience must

Be ultimately judge, adjust

Its apt name to each quality

Already known,--I would decree

Worship for such mere demonstration

And simple work of nomenclature,

Only the day I praised, not nature,

But Harvey, for the circulation.

I would praise such a Christ, with pride

And joy, that he, as none beside,

Had taught us how to keep the mind

God gave him, as God gave his kind,

Freer than they from fleshly taint:

I would call such a Christ our Saint,

As I declare our Poet, him

Whose insight makes all others dim:

A thousand poets pried at life,

And only one amid the strife

Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take

His crown, I 'd say, for the world's sake--

Though some objected--"Had we seen

The heart and head of each, what screen

Was broken there to give them light,

While in ourselves it shuts the sight,

We should no more admire, perchance,

That these found truth out at a glance,

Than marvel how the bat discerns

Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,

Led by a finer tact, a gift

He boasts, which other birds must shift

Without, and grope as best they can."

No, freely I would praise the man,--

Nor one whit more, if he contended

That gift of his from God descended.

Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?

No nearer something, by a jot,

Rise an infinity of nothings

Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:

Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,

Make that creator which was creature?

Multiply gifts upon man's head,

And what, when all 's done, shall be said

But--the more gifted he, I ween!

That one 's made Christ, this other, Pilate,

And this might be all that has been,--

So what is there to frown or smile at?

What is left for us, save, in growth

Of soul, to rise up, far past both,

From the gift looking to the giver,

And from the cistern to the river,

And from the finite to infinity,

And from man's dust to God's divinity?

XVII

Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast

Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:

Though he is so bright and we so dim,

We are made in his image to witness him:

And were no eye in us to tell,

Instructed by no inner sense,

The light of heaven from the dark of hell,

That light would want its evidence,--

Though justice, good and truth were still

Divine, if, by some demon's will,

Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed

Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.

No mere exposition of morality

Made or in part or in totality,

Should win you to give it worship, therefore:

And, if no better proof you will care for,

--Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?

Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more

Of what right is, than arrives at birth

In the best man's acts that we bow before:

This last knows better--true, but my fact is,

'T is one thing to know, and another to practice.

And thence I conclude that the real God-function

Is to furnish a motive and injunction

For practising what we know already.

And such an injunction and such a motive

As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,

High-minded," hang your tablet-votive

Outside the fane on a finger-post?

Morality to the uttermost,

Supreme in Christ as we all confess,

Why need we prove would avail no jot

To make him God, if God he were not?

What is the point where himself lays stress?

Does the precept run "Believe in good,

In justice, truth, now understood

For the first time"?--or, "Believe in me,

Who lived and died, yet essentially

Am Lord of Life"? Whoever can take

The same to his heart and for mere love's sake

Conceive of the love,--that man obtains

A new truth; no conviction gains

Of an old one only, made intense

By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.

XVIII

Can it be that he stays inside?

Is the vesture left me to commune with?

Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with

Even at this lecture, if she tried?

Oh, let me at lowest sympathize

With the lurking drop of blood that lies

In the desiccated brain's white roots

Without throb for Christ's attributes,

As the lecturer makes his special boast!

If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.

Admire we, how from heart to brain

(Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)

One instinct rises and falls again,

Restoring the equilibrium.

And how when the Critic had done his best,

And the pearl of price, at reason's test,

Lay dust and ashes levigable

On the Professor's lecture-table,--

When we looked for the inference and monition

That our faith, reduced to such condition,

Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--

He bids us, when we least expect it,

Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,

Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,

Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,

So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!

"Go home and venerate the myth

I thus have experimented with--

This man, continue to adore him

Rather than all who went before him,

And all who ever followed after!"--

Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!

Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?

That 's one point gained: can I compass another?

Unlearned love was safe from spurning--

Can 't we respect your loveless learning?

Let us at least give learning honor!

What laurels had we showered upon her,

Girding her loins up to perturb

Our theory of the Middle Verb;

Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar

O'er anapæsts in comic-trimeter;

Or curing the halt and maimed "Iketides,"

While we lounged on at our indebted ease:

Instead of which, a tricksy demon

Sets her at Titus or Philemon!

When ignorance wags his ears of leather

And hates God's word, 't is altogether;

Nor leaves he his congenial thistles

To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.

--And you, the audience, who might ravage

The world wide, enviably savage,

Nor heed the cry of the retriever,

More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--

I do not tell a lie so arrant

As say my passion's wings are furled up,

And, without plainest heavenly warrant,

I were ready and glad to give the world up--

But still, when you rub brow meticulous,

And ponder the profit of turning holy

If not for God's, for your own sake solely,

--God forbid I should find you ridiculous!

Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,

Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,

"Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--

Go on, you shall no more move my gravity

Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,

I find it in my heart to embarrass them

By hinting that their stick 's a mock horse,

And they really carry what they say carries them.

XIX

So sat I talking with my mind.

I did not long to leave the door

And find a new church, as before,

But rather was quiet and inclined

To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting

From further tracking and trying and testing.

"This tolerance is a genial mood!"

(Said I, and a little pause ensued.)

"One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,

And sees, each side, the good effects of it,

A value for religion's self,

A carelessness about the sects of it.

Let me enjoy my own conviction,

Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness,

Still spying there some dereliction

Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!

Better a mild indifferentism,

Teaching that both our faiths (though duller

His shine through a dull spirit's prism)

Originally had one color!

Better pursue a pilgrimage

Through ancient and through modern times

To many peoples, various climes,

Where I may see saint, savage, sage

Fuse their respective creeds in one

Before the general Father's throne!"

XX

--'T was the horrible storm began afresh!

The black night caught me in his mesh,

Whirled me up, and flung me prone.

I was left on the college-step alone.

I looked, and far there, ever fleeting

Far, far away, the receding gesture,

And looming of the lessening vesture!--

Swept forward from my stupid hand,

While I watched my foolish heart expand

In the lazy glow of benevolence,

O'er the various modes of man's belief.

I sprang up with fear's vehemence.

Needs must there be one way, our chief

Best way of worship: let me strive

To find it, and when found, contrive

My fellows also take their share!

This constitutes my earthly care:

God's is above it and distinct,

For I, a man, with men am linked

And not a brute with brutes; no gain

That I experience, must remain

Unshared: but should my best endeavor

To share it, fail--subsisteth ever

God's care above, and I exult

That God, by God's own ways occult,

May--doth, I will believe--bring back

All wanderers to a single track.

Meantime, I can but testify

God's care for me--no more, can I--

It is but for myself I know;

The world rolls witnessing around me

Only to leave me as it found me;

Men cry there, but my ear is slow:

Their races flourish or decay

--What boots it; while yon lucid way

Loaded with stars divides the vault?

But soon my soul repairs its fault

When, sharpening sense's hebetude,

She turns on my own life! So viewed,

No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense

With witnessings of providence:

And woe to me if when I look

Upon that record, the sole book

Unsealed to me, I take no heed

Of any warning that I read!

Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,

God's own hand did the rainbow weave,

Whereby the truth from heaven slid

Into my soul?--I cannot bid

The world admit he stooped to heal

My soul, as if in a thunder-peal

Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,

I only knew he named my name:

But what is the world to me, for sorrow

Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow

It drops the remark, with just-turned head,

Then, on again, "That man is dead"?

Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn

As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,

He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:

Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,--

Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,--

With a rapid finger circled round,

Fixed to the first poor inch of ground

To fight from, where his foot was found;

Whose ear but a minute since lay free

To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--

Summoned, a solitary man,

To end his life where his life began,

From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!

Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held

By the hem of the vesture!--

XXI

And I caught

At the flying robe, and unrepelled

Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught

With warmth and wonder and delight,

God's mercy being infinite.

For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,

When, at a passionate bound, I sprung

Out of the wondering world of rain,

Into the little chapel again.

XXII

How else was I found there, bolt upright

On my bench, as if I had never left it?

--Never flung out on the common at night,

Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,

Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,

Or the laboratory of the Professor!

For the Vision, that was true, I wist,

True as that heaven and earth exist.

There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,

With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;

Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall.

She had slid away a contemptuous space:

And the old fat woman, late so placable,

Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,

Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.

In short, a spectator might have fancied

That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,

Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,

Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,

And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.

But again, could such disgrace have happened?

Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;

And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?

Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?

Could I report as I do at the close,

First, the preacher speaks through his nose:

Second, his gesture is too emphatic:

Thirdly, to waive what 's pedagogic,

The subject-matter itself lacks logic:

Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.

Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,

Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call

Of making square to a finite eye

The circle of infinity,

And find so all-but-just-succeeding!

Great news! the sermon proves no reading

Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,

Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy!

And now that I know the very worst of him,

What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?

Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?

Shall I take on me to change his tasks,

And dare, dispatched to a river-head

For a simple draught of the element,

Neglect the thing for which he sent,

And return with another thing instead?--

Saying, "Because the water found

Welling up from underground,

Is mingled with the taints of earth,

While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,

And couldst, at wink or word, convulse

The world with the leap of a river-pulse,--

Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,

And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:

See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!

One would suppose that the marble bled.

What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:

The waterless cup will quench my thirst."

--Better have knelt at the poorest stream

That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!

For the less or the more is all God's gift,

Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.

And here, is there water or not, to drink?

I then, in ignorance and weakness,

Taking God's help, have attained to think

My heart does best to receive in meekness

That mode of worship, as most to his mind,

Where earthly aids being cast behind,

His All in All appears serene

With the thinnest human veil between,

Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,

The many motions of his spirit,

Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.

For the preacher's merit or demerit,

It were to be wished the flaws were fewer

In the earthen vessel, holding treasure

Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;

But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?

Heaven soon sets right all other matters!--

Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,

This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,

This soul at struggle with insanity,

Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?--

Which an empire gained, were a loss without.

May it be mine! And let us hope

That no worse blessing befall the Pope,

Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,

Of posturings and petticoatings,

Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings

In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!

Nor may the Professor forego its peace

At Göttingen presently, when, in the dusk

Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,

Prophesied of by that horrible husk--

When thicker and thicker the darkness fills

The world through his misty spectacles,

And he gropes for something more substantial

Than a fable, myth or personification,--

May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,

And stand confessed as the God of salvation!

Meantime, in the still recurring fear

Lest myself, at unawares, be found,

While attacking the choice of my neighbors round,

With none of my own made--I choose here!

The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;

I have done: and if any blames me,

Thinking that merely to touch in brevity

The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--

Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,

On the bounds of the holy and the awful,--

I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,

And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,

Who head and heart alike discernest,

Looking below light speech we utter,

When frothy spume and frequent sputter

Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!

May truth shine out, stand ever before us!

I put up pencil and join chorus

To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,

The last five verses of the third section

Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitefield's Collection,

To conclude with the doxology.

EASTER-DAY

I

How very hard it is to be

A Christian! Hard for you and me,

--Not the mere task of making real

That duty up to its ideal,

Effecting thus, complete and whole,

A purpose of the human soul--

For that is always hard to do;

But hard, I mean, for me and you

To realize it, more or less,

With even the moderate success

Which commonly repays our strife

To carry out the aims of life.

"This aim is greater," you will say,

"And so more arduous every way."

--But the importance of their fruits

Still proves to man, in all pursuits,

Proportional encouragement.

"Then, what if it be God's intent

That labor to this one result

Should seem unduly difficult?"

Ah, that 's a question in the dark--

And the sole thing that I remark

Upon the difficulty, this:

We do not see it where it is,

At the beginning of the race:

As we proceed, it shifts its place,

And where we looked for crowns to fall,

We find the tug 's to come,--that 's all.

II

At first you say, "The whole, or chief

Of difficulties, is belief.

Could I believe once thoroughly,

The rest were simple. What? Am I

An idiot, do you think,--a beast?

Prove to me, only that the least

Command of God is God's indeed,

And what injunction shall I need

To pay obedience? Death so nigh,

When time must end, eternity

Begin,--and cannot I compute,

Weigh loss and gain together, suit

My actions to the balance drawn,

And give my body to be sawn

Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied

To horses, stoned, burned, crucified,

Like any martyr of the list?

How gladly!--if I make acquist,

Through the brief minute's fierce annoy,

Of God's eternity of joy."

III

--And certainly you name the point

Whereon all turns: for could you joint

This flexile finite life once tight

Into the fixed and infinite,

You, safe inside, would spurn what 's out,

With carelessness enough, no doubt--

Would spurn mere life: but when time brings

To their next stage your reasonings,

Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink

Nor see the path so well, I think.

IV

You say, "Faith may be, one agrees,

A touchstone for God's purposes,

Even as ourselves conceive of them.

Could he acquit us or condemn

For holding what no hand can loose,

Rejecting when we can't but choose?

As well award the victor's wreath

To whosoever should take breath

Duly each minute while he lived--

Grant heaven, because a man contrived

To see its sunlight every day

He walked forth on the public way.

You must mix some uncertainty

With faith, if you would have faith be.

Why, what but faith, do we abhor

And idolize each other for--

Faith in our evil or our good,

Which is or is not understood

Aright by those we love or those

We hate, thence called our friends or foes?

Your mistress saw your spirit's grace,

When, turning from the ugly face,

I found belief in it too hard;

And she and I have our reward.

--Yet here a doubt peeps: well for us

Weak beings, to go using thus

A touchstone for our little ends,

Trying with faith the foes and friends;

--But God, bethink you! I would fain

Conceive of the Creator's reign

As based upon exacter laws

Than creatures build by with applause.

In all God's acts--(as Plato cries

He doth)--he should geometrize.

Whence, I desiderate" ...

V

I see!

You would grow as a natural tree,

Stand as a rock, soar up like fire.

The world 's so perfect and entire,

Quite above faith, so right and fit!

Go there, walk up and down in it!

No. The creation travails, groans--

Contrive your music from its moans,

Without or let or hindrance, friend!

That 's an old story, and its end

As old--you come back (be sincere)

With every question you put here

(Here where there once was, and is still,

We think, a living oracle,

Whose answers you stand carping at)

This time flung back unanswered flat,--

Beside, perhaps, as many more

As those that drove you out before,

Now added, where was little need.

Questions impossible, indeed,

To us who sat still, all and each

Persuaded that our earth had speech,

Of God's, writ down, no matter if

In cursive type or hieroglyph,--

Which one fact freed us from the yoke

Of guessing why He never spoke.

You come back in no better plight

Than when you left us,--am I right?

VI

So, the old process, I conclude,

Goes on, the reasoning 's pursued

Further. You own, "'T is well averred,

A scientific faith 's absurd,

--Frustrates the very end 't was meant

To serve. So, I would rest content

With a mere probability,

But, probable; the chance must lie

Clear on one side,--lie all in rough,

So long as there be just enough

To pin my faith to, though it hap

Only at points: from gap to gap

One hangs up a huge curtain so,

Grandly, nor seeks to have it go

Foldless and flat along the wall.

What care I if some interval

Of life less plainly may depend

On God? I 'd hang there to the end;

And thus I should not find it hard

To be a Christian and debarred

From trailing on the earth, till furled

Away by death.--Renounce the world!

Were that a mighty hardship? Plan

A pleasant life, and straight some man

Beside you, with, if he thought fit,

Abundant means to compass it,

Shall turn deliberate aside

To try and live as, if you tried

You clearly might, yet most despise.

One friend of mine wears out his eyes,

Slighting the stupid joys of sense,

In patient hope that, ten years hence,

'Somewhat completer,' he may say,

'My list of _coleoptera!_'

While just the other who most laughs

At him, above all epitaphs

Aspires to have his tomb describe

Himself as sole among the tribe

Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed

A Grignon with the Regent's crest.

So that, subduing, as you want,

Whatever stands predominant

Among my earthly appetites

For tastes and smells and sounds and sights,

I shall be doing that alone,

To gain a palm-branch and a throne,

Which fifty people undertake

To do, and gladly, for the sake

Of giving a Semitic guess,

Or playing pawns at blindfold chess."

VII

Good: and the next thing is,--look round

For evidence enough! 'T is found,

No doubt: as is your sort of mind,

So is your sort of search: you 'll find

What you desire, and that 's to be

A Christian. What says history?

How comforting a point it were

To find some mummy-scrap declare

There lived a Moses! Better still,

Prove Jonah's whale translatable

Into some quicksand of the seas,

Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please,

That faith might flap her wings and crow

From such an eminence! Or, no--

The human heart 's best; you prefer

Making that prove the minister

To truth; you probe its wants and needs,

And hopes and fears, then try what creeds

Meet these most aptly,--resolute

That faith plucks such substantial fruit

Wherever these two correspond,

She little needs to look beyond

And puzzle out who Orpheus was,

Or Dionysius Zagrias.

You 'll find sufficient, as I say,

To satisfy you either way;

You wanted to believe; your pains

Are crowned--you do: and what remains?

"Renounce the world!"--Ah, were it done

By merely cutting one by one

Your limbs off, with your wise head last,

How easy were it!--how soon past,

If once in the believing mood!

"Such is man's usual gratitude,

Such thanks to God do we return,

For not exacting that we spurn

A single gift of life, forego

One real gain,--only taste them so

With gravity and temperance,

That those mild virtues may enhance

Such pleasures, rather than abstract--

Last spice of which, will be the fact

Of love discerned in every gift;

While, when the scene of life shall shift,

And the gay heart be taught to ache,

As sorrows and privations take

The place of joy,--the thing that seems

Mere misery, under human schemes,

Becomes, regarded by the light

Of love, as very near or quite

As good a gift as joy before.

So plain is it that, all the more

A dispensation 's merciful,

More pettishly we try and cull

Briers, thistles, from our private plot,

To mar God's ground where thorns are not!"

VIII

Do you say this, or I?--Oh, you!

Then, what, my friend?--(thus I pursue

Our parley)--you indeed opine

That the Eternal and Divine

Did, eighteen centuries ago,

In very truth ... Enough! you know

The all-stupendous tale,--that Birth,

That Life, that Death! And all, the earth

Shuddered at,--all, the heavens grew black

Rather than see; all, nature's rack

And throe at dissolution's brink

Attested,---all took place, you think,

Only to give our joys a zest,

And prove our sorrows for the best?

We differ, then! Were I, still pale

And heartstruck at the dreadful tale,

Waiting to hear God's voice declare

What horror followed for my share,

As implicated in the deed,

Apart from other sins,--concede

That if He blacked out in a blot

My brief life's pleasantness, 't were not

So very disproportionate!

Or there might be another fate--

I certainly could understand

(If fancies were the thing in hand)

How God might save, at that day's price,

The impure in their impurities,

Give license formal and complete

To choose the fair and pick the sweet.

But there be certain words, broad, plain,

Uttered again and yet again,

Hard to mistake or overgloss--

Announcing this world's gain for loss,

And bidding us reject the same:

The whole world lieth (they proclaim)

In wickedness,--come out of it!

Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit,

But I who thrill through every nerve

At thought of what deaf ears deserve--

How do you counsel in the case?

IX

"I 'd take, by all means, in your place,

The safe side, since it so appears:

Deny myself, a few brief years,

The natural pleasure, leave the fruit

Or cut the plant up by the root.

Remember what a martyr said

On the rude tablet overhead!

'I was born sickly, poor and mean,

A slave: no misery could screen

The holders of the pearl of price

From Cæsar's envy; therefore twice

I fought with beasts, and three times saw

My children suffer by his law;

At last my own release was earned:

I was some time in being burned,

But at the close a Hand came through

The fire above my head, and drew

My soul to Christ, whom now I see.

Sergius, a brother, writes for me

This testimony on the wall--

For me, I have forgot it all.'

You say right; this were not so hard!

And since one nowise is debarred

From this, why not escape some sins

By such a method?"

X

Then begins

To the old point revulsion new--

(For 't is just this I bring you to)--

If after all we should mistake,

And so renounce life for the sake

Of death and nothing else? You hear

Each friend we jeered at, send the jeer

Back to ourselves with good effect--

"There were my beetles to collect!

My box--a trifle, I confess,

But here I hold it, ne'ertheless!"

Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart

And answer) we, the better part

Have chosen, though 't were only hope,--

Nor envy moles like you that grope

Amid your veritable muck,

More than the grasshoppers would truck,

For yours, their passionate life away,

That spends itself in leaps all day

To reach the sun, you want the eyes

To see, as they the wings to rise

And match the noble hearts of them!

Thus the contemner we contemn,--

And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward

Its stroke off, caught upon our guard,

--Not struck enough to overturn

Our faith, but shake it--make us learn

What I began with, and, I wis,

End, having proved,--how hard it is

To be a Christian!

XI

"Proved, or not,

Howe'er you wis, small thanks, I wot,

You get of mine, for taking pains

To make it hard to me. Who gains

By that, I wonder? Here I live

In trusting ease; and here you drive

At causing me to lose what most

Yourself would mourn for had you lost!"

XII

But, do you see, my friend, that thus

You leave Saint Paul for Æschylus?

--Who made his Titan's arch-device

The giving men _blind hopes_ to spice

The meal of life with, else devoured

In bitter haste, while lo, death loured

Before them at the platter's edge!

If faith should be, as I allege,

Quite other than a condiment

To heighten flavors with, or meant

(Like that brave curry of his Grace)

To take at need the victuals' place?

If, having dined, you would digest

Besides, and turning to your rest

Should find instead ...

XIII

Now, you shall see

And judge if a mere foppery

Pricks on my speaking! I resolve

To utter--yes, it shall devolve

On you to hear as solemn, strange

And dread a thing as in the range

Of facts,--or fancies, if God will--

E'er happened to our kind! I still

Stand in the cloud and, while it wraps

My face, ought not to speak perhaps;

Seeing that if I carry through

My purpose, if my words in you

Find a live actual listener,

My story, reason must aver

False after all--the happy chance!

While, if each human countenance

I meet in London day by day,

Be what I fear,--my warnings fray

No one, and no one they convert,

And no one helps me to assert

How hard it is to really be

A Christian, and in vacancy

I pour this story!

XIV

I commence

By trying to inform you, whence

It comes that every Easter-night

As now, I sit up, watch, till light,

Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs,

Give, through my window-pane, gray proofs

That Easter-Day is breaking slow.

On such a night, three years ago,

It chanced that I had cause to cross

The common, where the chapel was,

Our friend spoke of, the other day--

You 've not forgotten, I dare say.

I fell to musing of the time

So close, the blessed matin-prime

All hearts leap up at, in some guise--

One could not well do otherwise.

Insensibly my thoughts were bent

Toward the main point; I overwent

Much the same ground of reasoning

As you and I just now. One thing

Remained, however--one that tasked

My soul to answer; and I asked,

Fairly and frankly, what might be

That History, that Faith, to me

--Me there--not me in some domain

Built up and peopled by my brain,

Weighing its merits as one weighs

Mere theories for blame or praise,

--The kingcraft of the Lucumons,

Or Fourier's scheme, its pros and cons,--

But my faith there, or none at all.

"How were my case, now, did I fall

Dead here, this minute--should I lie

Faithful or faithless?" Note that I

Inclined thus ever!--little prone

For instance, when I lay alone

In childhood, to go calm to sleep

And leave a closet where might keep

His watch perdue some murderer

Waiting till twelve o'clock to stir,

As good authentic legends tell:

"He might: but how improbable!

How little likely to deserve

The pains and trial to the nerve

Of thrusting head into the dark!"--

Urged my old nurse, and bade me mark

Beside, that, should the dreadful scout

Really lie hid there, and leap out

At first turn of the rusty key,

Mine were small gain that she could see,

Killed not in bed but on the floor,

And losing one night's sleep the more.

I tell you, I would always burst

The door ope, know my fate at first.

This time, indeed, the closet penned

No such assassin: but a friend

Rather, peeped out to guard me, fit

For counsel, Common Sense, to wit,

Who said a good deal that might pass,--

Heartening, impartial too, it was,

Judge else: "For, soberly now,--who

Should be a Christian if not you?"

(Hear how he smoothed me down.) "One takes

A whole life, sees what course it makes

Mainly, and not by fits and starts--

In spite of stoppage which imparts

Fresh value to the general speed.

A life, with none, would fly indeed:

Your progressing is slower--right!

We deal with progress and not flight.

Through baffling senses passionate,

Fancies as restless,--with a freight

Of knowledge cumbersome enough

To sink your ship when waves grow rough,

Though meant for ballast in the hold,--

I find, 'mid dangers manifold,

The good bark answers to the helm

Where faith sits, easier to o'erwhelm

Than some stout peasant's heavenly guide,

Whose hard head could not, if it tried,

Conceive a doubt, nor understand

How senses hornier than his hand

Should 'tice the Christian off his guard.

More happy! But shall we award

Less honor to the hull which, dogged

By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged,

Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone

And stanchions going, yet bears on,--

Than to mere lifeboats, built to save,

And triumph o'er the breaking wave?

Make perfect your good ship as these,

And what were her performances!"

I added--"Would the ship reach home!

I wish indeed 'God's kingdom come'--

The day when I shall see appear

His bidding, as my duty, clear

From doubt! And it shall dawn, that day,

Some future season; Easter may

Prove, not impossibly, the time--

Yes, that were striking--fates would chime

So aptly! Easter-morn, to bring

The Judgment!--deeper in the spring

Than now, however, when there 's snow

Capping the hills; for earth must show

All signs of meaning to pursue

Her tasks as she was wont to do

--The skylark, taken by surprise

As we ourselves, shall recognize

Sudden the end. For suddenly

It comes; the dreadfulness must be

In that; all warrants the belief--

'At night it cometh like a thief.'

I fancy why the trumpet blows;

--Plainly, to wake one. From repose

We shall start up, at last awake

From life, that insane dream we take

For waking now, because it seems.

And as, when now we wake from dreams,

We laugh, while we recall them, 'Fool,

To let the chance slip, linger cool

When such adventure offered! Just

A bridge to cross, a dwarf to thrust

Aside, a wicked mage to stab--

And, lo ye, I had kissed Queen Mab!'

So shall we marvel why we grudged

Our labor here, and idly judged

Of heaven, we might have gained, but lose!

Lose? Talk of loss, and I refuse

To plead at all! You speak no worse

Nor better than my ancient nurse

When she would tell me in my youth

I well deserved that shapes uncouth

Frighted and teased me in my sleep:

Why could I not in memory keep

Her precept for the evil's cure?

'Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure

You 'll wake forthwith!'"

XV

And as I said

This nonsense, throwing back my head

With light complacent laugh, I found

Suddenly all the midnight round

One fire. The dome of heaven had stood

As made up of a multitude

Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack

Of ripples infinite and black,

From sky to sky. Sudden there went,

Like horror and astonishment,

A fierce vindictive scribble of red

Quick flame across, as if one said

(The angry scribe of Judgment) "There--

Burn it!" And straight I was aware

That the whole ribwork round, minute

Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,

Was tinted, each with its own spot

Of burning at the core, till clot

Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire

Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire

As fanned to measure equable,--

Just so great conflagrations kill

Night overhead, and rise and sink,

Reflected. Now the fire would shrink

And wither off the blasted face

Of heaven, and I distinct might trace

The sharp black ridgy outlines left

Unburned like network--then, each cleft

The fire had been sucked back into,

Regorged, and out it surging flew

Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,

Till, tolerating to be tamed

No longer, certain rays world-wide

Shot downwardly. On every side

Caught past escape, the earth was lit;

As if a dragon's nostril split

And all his famished ire o'erflowed;

Then, as he winced at his lord's goad,

Back he inhaled: whereat I found

The clouds into vast pillars bound,

Based on the corners of the earth,

Propping the skies at top: a dearth

Of fire i' the violet intervals,

Leaving exposed the utmost walls

Of time, about to tumble in

And end the world.

XVI

I felt begin

The Judgment-Day: to retrocede

Was too late now. "In very deed,"

(I uttered to myself) "that Day!"

The intuition burned away

All darkness from my spirit too:

There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,

Choosing the world. The choice was made;

And naked and disguiseless stayed,

And unevadable, the fact.

My brain held all the same compact

Its senses, nor my heart declined

Its office; rather, both combined

To help me in this juncture. I

Lost not a second,--agony

Gave boldness: since my life had end

And my choice with it--best defend,

Applaud both! I resolved to say,

"So was I framed by thee, such way

I put to use thy senses here!

It was so beautiful, so near,

Thy world,--what could I then but choose

My part there? Nor did I refuse

To look above the transient boon

Of time; but it was hard so soon

As in a short life, to give up

Such beauty: I could put the cup,

Undrained of half its fulness, by;

But, to renounce it utterly,

--That was too hard! Nor did the cry

Which bade renounce it, touch my brain

Authentically deep and plain

Enough to make my lips let go.

But thou, who knowest all, dost know

Whether I was not, life's brief while,

Endeavoring to reconcile

Those lips (too tardily, alas!)

To letting the dear remnant pass,

One day,--some drops of earthly good

Untasted! Is it for this mood,

That thou, whose earth delights so well,

Hast made its complement a hell?"

XVII

A final belch of fire like blood,

Overbroke all heaven in one flood

Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky

Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,

Then ashes. But I heard no noise

(Whatever was) because a voice

Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done,

Time ends, Eternity 's begun,

And thou art judged forevermore."

XVIII

I looked up; all seemed as before;

Of that cloud-Tophet overhead

No trace was left: I saw instead

The common round me, and the sky

Above, stretched drear and emptily

Of life. 'T was the last watch of night,

Except what brings the morning quite;

When the armed angel, conscience-clear,

His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear

And gazes on the earth he guards,

Safe one night more through all its wards,

Till God relieve him at his post.

"A dream--a waking dream at most!"

(I spoke out quick, that I might shake

The horrid nightmare off, and wake.)

"The world gone, yet the world is here?

Are not all things as they appear?

Is Judgment past for me alone?

--And where had place the great white throne?

The rising of the quick and dead?

Where stood they, small and great? Who read

The sentence from the opened book?"

So, by degrees, the blood forsook

My heart, and let it beat afresh;

I knew I should break through the mesh

Of horror, and breathe presently:

When, lo, again, the voice by me!

XIX

I saw ... O brother, 'mid far sands

The palm-tree-cinctured city stands,

Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue,

Leans o'er it, while the years pursue

Their course, unable to abate

Its paradisal laugh at fate!

One morn,--the Arab staggers blind

O'er a new tract of death, calcined

To ashes, silence, nothingness,--

And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess

Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies

And prostrate earth, he should surprise

The imaged vapor, head to foot,

Surveying, motionless and mute,

Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt

It vanish up again?--So hapt

My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke

Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,--

I saw him. One magnific pall

Mantled in massive fold and fall

His head, and coiled in snaky swathes

About his feet: night's black, that bathes

All else, broke, grizzled with despair,

Against the soul of blackness there.

A gesture told the mood within--

That wrapped right hand which based the chin,

That intense meditation fixed

On his procedure,--pity mixed

With the fulfilment of decree.

Motionless, thus, he spoke to me,

Who fell before his feet, a mass,

No man now.

XX

"All is come to pass.

Such shows are over for each soul

They had respect to. In the roll

Of Judgment which convinced mankind

Of sin, stood many, bold and blind,

Terror must burn the truth into:

Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do

With absolute omnipotence,

Able its judgments to dispense

To the whole race, as every one

Were its sole object. Judgment done,

God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled

To nothingness for thee. This world,

This finite life, thou hast preferred,

In disbelief of God's plain word,

To heaven and to infinity.

Here the probation was for thee,

To show thy soul the earthly mixed

With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.

The earthly joys lay palpable,--

A taint, in each, distinct as well;

The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,

Above them, but as truly were

Taintless, so, in their nature, best.

Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest

'T was fitter spirit should subserve

The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve

Beneath the spirit's play. Advance

No claim to their inheritance

Who chose the spirit's fugitive

Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live

Indeed, if rays, completely pure

From flesh that dulls them, could endure,--

Not shoot in meteor-light athwart

Our earth, to show how cold and swart

It lies beneath their fire, but stand

As stars do, destined to expand,

Prove veritable worlds, our home!'

Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome

Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak,

No nook of earth,--I shall not seek

Its service further!' Thou art shut

Out of the heaven of spirit; glut

Thy sense upon the world: 't is thine

Forever--take it!"

XXI

"How? Is mine,

The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke

Out in a transport.) "Hast thou spoke

Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite

Treasures of wonder and delight

For me?"

XXII

The austere voice returned,--

"So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned

What God accounteth happiness,

Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess

What hell may be his punishment

For those who doubt if God invent

Better than they. Let such men rest

Content with what they judged the best.

Let the unjust usurp at will:

The filthy shall be filthy still:

Miser, there waits the gold for thee!

Hater, indulge thine enmity!

And thou, whose heaven self-ordained

Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained,

Do it! Take all the ancient show!

The woods shall wave, the rivers flow,

And men apparently pursue

Their works, as they were wont to do,

While living in probation yet.

I promise not thou shalt forget

The past, now gone to its account;

But leave thee with the old amount

Of faculties, nor less nor more,

Unvisited, as heretofore,

By God's free spirit, that makes an end.

So, once more, take thy world! Expend

Eternity upon its shows

Flung thee as freely as one rose

Out of a summer's opulence,

Over the Eden-barrier whence

Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"

XXIII

I sat up. All was still again.

I breathed free: to my heart, back fled

The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said.

I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,

And recollected I might learn

From books, how many myriad sorts

Of fern exist, to trust reports,

Each as distinct and beautiful

As this, the very first I cull.

Think, from the first leaf to the last!

Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast

Exhaustless beauty, endless change

Of wonder! And this foot shall range

Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour

The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?

XXIV

Then the voice: "Welcome so to rate

The arras-folds that variegate

The earth, God's antechamber, well!

The wise, who waited there, could tell

By these, what royalties in store

Lay one step past the entrance-door.

For whom, was reckoned, not too much,

This life's munificence? For such

As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one

Was able, in a million,

To feel that any marvel lay

In objects round his feet all day;

Scarce one, in many millions more,

Willing, if able, to explore

The secreter, minuter charm!

--Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm

Of power to cope with God's intent,--

Or scared if the south firmament

With north-fire did its wings refledge!

All partial beauty was a pledge

Of beauty in its plenitude:

But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,

Retain it! plenitude be theirs

Who looked above!"

XXV

Though sharp despairs

Shot through me, I held up, bore on.

"What matter though my trust were gone

From natural things? Henceforth my part

Be less with nature than with art!

For art supplants, gives mainly worth

To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth--

And I will seek his impress, seek

The statuary of the Greek,

Italy's painting--there my choice

Shall fix!"

XXVI

"Obtain it!" said the voice,

"The one form with its single act,

Which sculptors labored to abstract,

The one face, painters tried to draw,

With its one look, from throngs they saw.

And that perfection in their soul,

These only hinted at? The whole,

They were but parts of? What each laid

His claim to glory on?--afraid

His fellow-men should give him rank

By mere tentatives which he shrank

Smitten at heart from, all the more,

That gazers pressed in to adore!

'Shall I be judged by only these?'

If such his soul's capacities,

Even while he trod the earth,--think, now.

What pomp in Buonarroti's brow,

With its new palace-brain where dwells

Superb the soul, unvexed by cells

That crumbled with the transient clay!

What visions will his right hand's sway

Still turn to forms, as still they burst

Upon him? How will he quench thirst,

Titanically infantine,

Laid at the breast of the Divine?

Does it confound thee,--this first page

Emblazoning man's heritage?--

Can this alone absorb thy sight,

As pages were not infinite,--

Like the omnipotence which tasks

Itself to furnish all that asks

The soul it means to satiate?

What was the world, the starry state

Of the broad skies,--what, all displays

Of power and beauty intermixed,

Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,--

What else than needful furniture

For life's first stage? God's work, be sure.

No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!

He filled, did not exceed, man's want

Of beauty in this life. But through

Life pierce,--and what has earth to do,

Its utmost beauty's appanage,

With the requirement of next stage?

Did God pronounce earth 'very good'?

Needs must it he, while understood

For man's preparatory state;

Naught here to heighten nor abate;

Transfer the same completeness here,

To serve a new state's use,--and drear

Deficiency gapes every side!

The good, tried once, were bad, retried.

See the enwrapping rocky niche,

Sufficient for the sleep in which

The lizard breathes for ages safe:

Split the mould--and as light would chafe

The creature's new world-widened sense,

Dazzled to death at evidence

Of all the sounds and sights that broke

Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,--

So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff

Was, neither more nor less, enough

To house man's soul, man's need fulfil.

Man reckoned it immeasurable?

So thinks the lizard of his vault!

Could God be taken in default,

Short of contrivances, by you,--

Or reached, ere ready to pursue

His progress through eternity?

That chambered rock, the lizard's world,

Your easy mallet's blow has hurled

To nothingness forever; so,

Has God abolished at a blow

This world, wherein his saints were pent,--

Who, though found grateful and content,

With the provision there, as thou,

Yet knew he would not disallow

Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,--

Unsated,--not unsatable,

As paradise gives proof. Deride

Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"

XXVII

I cried in anguish: "Mind, the mind,

So miserably cast behind,

To gain what had been wisely lost!

Oh, let me strive to make the most

Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped

Of budding wings, else now equipped

For voyage from summer isle to isle!

And though she needs must reconcile

Ambition to the life on ground,

Still, I can profit by late found

But precious knowledge. Mind is best--

I will seize mind, forego the rest,

And try how far my tethered strength

May crawl in this poor breadth and length.

Let me, since I can fly no more,

At least spin dervish-like about

(Till giddy rapture almost doubt

I fly) through circling sciences,

Philosophies and histories!

Should the whirl slacken there, then verse,

Fining to music, shall asperse

Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain

Intoxicate, half-break my chain!

Not joyless, though more favored feet

Stand calm, where I want wings to beat

The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"

XXVIII

Then (sickening even while I spoke):

"Let me alone! No answer, pray,

To this! I know what thou wilt say!

All still is earth's,--to know, as much

As feel its truths, which if we touch

With sense, or apprehend in soul,

What matter? I have reached the goal--

'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn

My eyes, too sure, at every turn!

I cannot look back now, nor stake

Bliss on the race, for running's sake.

The goal's a ruin like the rest!"

"And so much worse thy latter quest,"

(Added the voice,) "that even on earth--

Whenever, in man's soul, had birth

Those intuitions, grasps of guess,

Which pull the more into the less,

Making the finite comprehend

Infinity,--the bard would spend

Such praise alone, upon his craft,

As, when wind-lyres obey the waft,

Goes to the craftsman who arranged

The seven strings, changed them and rechanged--

Knowing it was the South that harped.

He felt his song; in singing, warped;

Distinguished his and God's part: whence

A world of spirit as of sense

Was plain to him, yet not too plain,

Which he could traverse, not remain

A guest in:--else were permanent

Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant

To sting with hunger for full light,--

Made visible in verse, despite

The veiling weakness,--truth by means

Of fable, showing while it screens,--

Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,

Was ever fable on outside.

Such gleams made bright the earth an age;

Now the whole sun's his heritage!

Take up thy world, it is allowed,

Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"

XXIX

Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds,

Catches no more at broken reeds,--

But lilies flower those reeds above:

I let the world go, and take love!

Love survives in me, albeit those

I love be henceforth masks and shows,

Not living men and women: still

I mind how love repaired all ill,

Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends

With parents, brothers, children, friends!

Some semblance of a woman yet

With eyes to help me to forget,

Shall look on me; and I will match

Departed love with love, attach

Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn

The poorest of the grains of corn

I save from shipwreck on this isle,

Trusting its barrenness may smile

With happy foodful green one day,

More precious for the pains. I pray,--

Leave to love, only!"

XXX

At the word,

The form, I looked to have been stirred

With pity and approval, rose

O'er me, as when the headsman throws

Axe over shoulder to make end--

I fell prone, letting him expend

His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice

Smote me. "Is this thy final choice?

Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!

And all thou dost enumerate

Of power and beauty in the world,

The mightiness of love was curled

Inextricably round about.

Love lay within it and without,

To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul

Still shrunk from him who made the whole,

Still set deliberate aside

His love!--Now take love! Well betide

Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take

The show of love for the name's sake,

Remembering every moment who,

Beside creating thee unto

These ends, and these for thee, was said

To undergo death in thy stead

In flesh like thine: so ran the tale.

What doubt in thee could countervail

Belief in it? Upon the ground

'That in the story had been found

Too much love! How could God love so?'

He who in all his works below

Adapted to the needs of man,

Made love the basis of the plan,--

Did love, as was demonstrated:

While man, who was so fit instead

To hate, as every day gave proof,--Man

thought man, for his kind's behoof,

Both, could and did invent that scheme

Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem

Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise,

Not tally with God's usual ways!"

XXXI

And I cowered deprecatingly--

"Thou Love of God! Or let me die,

Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!

Let me not know that all is lost,

Though lost it be--leave me not tied

To this despair, this corpse-like bride!

Let that old life seem mine--no more--

With limitation as before,

With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:

Be all the earth a wilderness!

Only let me go on, go on,

Still hoping ever and anon

To reach one eve the Better Land!"

XXXII

Then did the form expand, expand--

I knew him through the dread disguise

As the whole God within his eyes

Embraced me.

XXXIII

When I lived again,

The day was breaking,--the gray plain

I rose from, silvered thick with dew.

Was this a vision? False or true?

Since then, three varied years are spent,

And commonly my mind is bent

To think it was a dream--be sure

A mere dream and distemperature--

The last day's watching: then the night,--

The shock of that strange Northern Light

Set my head swimming, bred in me

A dream. And so I live, you see,

Go through the world, try, prove, reject,

Prefer, still struggling to effect

My warfare; happy that I can

Be crossed and thwarted as a man,

Not left in God's contempt apart,

With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,

Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.

Thank God, she still each method tries

To catch me, who may yet escape,

She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape!

Thank God, no paradise stands barred

To entry, and I find it hard

To be a Christian, as I said!

Still every now and then my head

Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear

Spite of the sunshine, while I fear

And think, "How dreadful to be grudged

No ease henceforth, as one that's judged,

Condemned to earth forever, shut

From heaven!"

But Easter-Day breaks! But

Christ rises! Mercy every way

Is infinite,--and who can say?

MEN AND WOMEN

LONDON AND FLORENCE, 184-185-

In making his final distribution of poems Browning gave the above

title and dates to the thirteen poems which follow, but the title was

originally given by him to two volumes published in 1855. The other

poems are dispersed among the several groups already named, with the

exception of _In a Balcony_, which appeared by itself.

"TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS"

Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak?

'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art:

Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts

Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.

--True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!

But why such long prolusion and display,

Such turning and adjustment of the harp,

And taking it upon your breast, at length,

Only to speak dry words across its strings?

Stark-naked thought is in request enough:

Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears!

The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,

Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp--

Exchange our harp for that,--who hinders you?

But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think;

Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse:

Boys seek for images and melody,

Men must have reason--so, you aim at men.

Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true;

We see and hear and do not wonder much:

If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!

As German Boehme never cared for plants

Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,

He noticed all at once that plants could speak,

Nay, turned with loosened tongue, to talk with him.

That day the daisy had an eye indeed--

Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes!

We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.

But by the time youth slips a stage or two

While reading prose in that tough book he wrote

(Collating and emendating the same

And settling on the sense most to our mind),

We shut the clasps and find life's summer past.

Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss--

Another Boehme with a tougher book

And subtler meanings of what roses say,--

Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt,

John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about?

He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes,

And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,

Over us, under, round us every side.

Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs

And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,--

Buries us with a glory, young once more,

Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

So come, the harp back to your heart again!

You are a poem, though your poem's naught.

The best of all you showed before, believe,

Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords

Bent, following the cherub at the top

That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.

HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY

I only knew one poet in my life:

And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Valladolid,

A man of mark, to know next time you saw.

His very serviceable suit of black

Was courtly once and conscientious still,

And many might have worn it, though none did:

The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,

Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.

He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,

Scenting the world, looking it full in face,

An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.

They turned up, now, the alley by the church,

That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves

On the main promenade just at the wrong time:

You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat,

Making a peaked shade blacker than itself

Against the single window spared some house

Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,--

Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick

Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks

Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.

He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,

The man who slices lemons into drink,

The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys

That volunteer to help him turn its winch.

He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,

And fly-leaf ballads on the vender's string,

And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.

He took such cognizance of men and things,

If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;

If any cursed a woman, he took note;

Yet stared at nobody,--you stared at him,

And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,

He seemed to know you and expect as much.

So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was loosed,

It marked the shameful and notorious fact,

We had among us, not so much a spy,

As a recording chief-inquisitor,

The town's true master if the town but knew!

We merely kept a governor for form,

While this man walked about and took account

Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,

And wrote it fully to our Lord the King

Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,

And reads them in his bedroom of a night.

Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,

A tang of ... well, it was not wholly ease

As back into your mind the man's look came.

Stricken in years a little,--such a brow

His eyes had to live under!--clear as flint

On either side the formidable nose

Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw.

Had he to do with A's surprising fate?

When altogether old B disappeared

And young C got his mistress,--was't our friend,

His letter to the King, that did it all?

What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?

Our Lord the King has favorites manifold,

And shifts his ministry some once a month;

Our city gets new governors at whiles,--

But never word or sign, that I could hear,

Notified to this man about the streets

The King's approval of those letters conned

The last thing duly at the dead of night.

Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,

Exhorting when none heard--"Beseech me not!

Too far above my people,--beneath me!

I set the watch,--how should the people know?

Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!"

Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least--

That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes

Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,

You found he ate his supper in a room

Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,

And twenty naked girls to change his plate!

Poor man, he lived another kind of life

In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,

Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise!

The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat,

Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back,

Playing a decent cribbage with his maid

(Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese

And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,

Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,

Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

My father, like the man of sense he was,

Would point him out to me a dozen times;

"'St--'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!

I had been used to think that personage

Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,

And feathers like a forest in his hat,

Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,

Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,

And memorized the miracle in vogue!

He had a great observance from us boys;

We were in error; that was not the man.

I'd like now, yet had haply been afraid,

To have just looked, when this man came to die,

And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides

And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,

With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.

Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,

Through a whole campaign of the world's life and death,

Doing the King's work all the dim day long,

In his old coat and up to knees in mud,

Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,--

And, now the day was won, relieved at once!

No further show or need for that old coat,

You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while

How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

A second, and the angels alter that.

Well, I could never write a verse,--could you?

Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES

Upon the first proof of this poem Browning wrote: "I had better say

perhaps that the above is nearly all retained of a tragedy I composed

much against my endeavor, while in bed with a fever two years ago--it

went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia; but when I

got well, putting only thus much down at once, I soon forgot the

remainder." The notes contain an interesting defence by Browning of the

form of his Greek names.

I am a goddess of the ambrosial courts,

And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed

By none whose temples whiten this the world.

Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;

I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace;

On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard

Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,

And every feathered mother's callow brood,

And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns

Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,

Upon my image at Athenai here;

And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,

Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step

To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,

And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts

Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,

Neglected homage to another god:

Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke

Of tapers lulled, in jealousy dispatched

A noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings,

Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself

The son of Theseus her great absent spouse.

Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage

Against the fury of the Queen, she judged

Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart

An Amazonian stranger's race should dare

To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:

Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll

The fame of him her swerving made not swerve.

And Theseus read, returning, and believed,

And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,

The man without a crime who, last as first,

Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth.

Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained

That of his wishes should be granted three,

And one he imprecated straight--"Alive

May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"

Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince

Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car

That give the feet a stay against the strength

Of the Henetian horses, and around

His body flung the rein, and urged their speed

Along the rocks and shingles of the shore,

When from the gaping wave a monster flung

His obscene body in the coursers' path.

These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled

Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him

That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole

Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed,

Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast,

Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein

Which either hand directed; nor they quenched

The frenzy of their flight before each trace,

Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car,

Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,

Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sands

On that detested beach, was bright with blood

And morsels of his flesh: then fell the steeds

Head-foremost, crashing in their moonèd fronts,

Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.

His people, who had witnessed all afar,

Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.

But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced

(Indomitable as a man foredoomed)

That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,

I, in a flood of glory visible,

Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed

By deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth.

Then Theseus lay the woefullest of men,

And worthily; but ere the death-veils hid

His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed

To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.

So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries,

Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake

Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;

Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate

Should dress my image with some faded poor

Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object

Such slackness to my worshippers who turn

Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand,

As they had climbed Olumpos to report

Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne--

I interposed: and, this eventful night,--

(While round the funeral pyre the populace

Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound

Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped

O'er the dead body of their withered prince,

And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated

On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab

'Twas bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief--

As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed

Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night,

And the gay fire, elate with mastery,

Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars

Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,

And splendid gums like gold,)--my potency

Conveyed the perished man to my retreat

In the thrice-venerable forest here.

And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now

The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame,

Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught

The doctrine of each herb and flower and root,

To know their secret'st virtue and express

The saving soul of all: who so has soothed

With lavers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,

Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,

And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,

And laid the strips and jagged ends of flesh

Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot

Of every tortured limb--that now he lies

As if mere sleep possessed him underneath

These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer,

Divine presenter of the healing rod,

Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,

Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!

Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!

And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,

Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves

That strew the turf around the twain! While I

Await, in fitting silence, the event.

AN EPISTLE

CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB

PHYSICIAN

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,

The not-incurious in God's handiwork

(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,

Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,

To coop up and keep down on earth a space

That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul)

--To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,

Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,

Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks

Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,

Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip

Back and rejoin its source before the term,--

And aptest in contrivance (under God)

To baffle it by deftly stopping such:--

The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home

Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)

Three samples of true snake-stone--rarer still,

One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,

(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)

And writeth now the twenty-second time.

My journeyings were brought to Jericho:

Thus I resume. Who studious in our art

Shall count a little labor unrepaid?

I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone

On many a flinty furlong of this land.

Also, the country-side is all on fire

With rumors of a marching hitherward:

Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.

A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;

Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:

I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.

Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,

And once a town declared me for a spy;

But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,

Since this poor covert where I pass the night,

This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence

A man with plague-sores at the third degree

Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!

'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,

To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip

And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.

A viscid choler is observable

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say;

And falling-sickness hath a happier cure

Than our school wots of: there's a spider here

Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back;

Take five and drop them ... but who knows his mind,

The Syrian runagate I trust this to?

His service payeth me a sublimate

Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.

Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,

There set in order my experiences,

Gather what most deserves, and give thee all--

Or I might add, Judæa's gum-tragacanth

Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,

Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry.

In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease

Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy--

Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar--

But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.

Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,

Protesteth his devotion is my price--

Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?

I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,

What set me off a-writing first of all.

An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!

For, be it this town's barrenness--or else

The Man had something in the look of him--

His case has struck me far more than 't is worth.

So, pardon if--(lest presently I lose

In the great press of novelty at hand

The care and pains this somehow stole from me)

I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,

Almost in sight--for, wilt thou have the truth?

The very man is gone from me but now,

Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.

Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!