Stop, let me have the truth of that!Is that all true? I say, the dayTen years ago when both of usMet on a morning, friends—as thusWe meet this evening, friends or what?—Did you—because I took your armAnd sillily smiled, "A mass of brassThat sea looks, blazing underneath!"While up the cliff-road edged with heath,We took the turns nor came to harm—Did you consider, "Now makes twiceThat I have seen her, walked and talkedWith this poor pretty thoughtful thing,Whose worth I weigh: she tries to sing;Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice;"Reads verse and thinks she understands;Loves all, at any rate, that's great,Good, beautiful; but much as weDown at the bath-house love the sea,Who breathe its salt and bruise its sands:"While ... do but follow the fishing-gullThat flaps and floats from wave to cave!There's the sea-lover, fair my friend!What then? Be patient, mark and mend!Had you the making of your skull?"And did you, when we faced the churchWith spire and sad slate roof, aloofFrom human fellowship so far,Where a few graveyard crosses are,And garlands for the swallows' perch,—Did you determine, as we steppedO'er the lone stone fence, "Let me getHer for myself, and what's the earthWith all its art, verse, music; worth—Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?"Schumann's our music-maker now;Has his march-movement youth and mouth?Ingres's the modern man that paints;Which will lean on me, of his saints?Heine for songs; for kisses, how?"And did you, when we entered, reachedThe votive frigate, soft aloftRiding on air this hundred years,Safe-smiling at old hopes and fears,—Did you draw profit while she preached?Resolving, "Fools we wise men grow!Yes, I could easily blurt out curtSome question that might find replyAs prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye,And rush of red to cheek and brow:"Thus were a match made, sure and fast,'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the moundWhere, issuing, we shall stand and stayFor one more look at baths and bay,Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last—"A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged and lamed,Famous, however, for verse and worse,Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chairWhen gout and glory seat me there,So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed,—"And this young beauty, round and soundAs a mountain-apple, youth and truthWith loves and doves, at all eventsWith money in the Three per Cents;Whose choice of me would seem profound:—"She might take me as I take her.Perfect the hour would pass, alas!Climb high, love high, what matter? Still,Feet, feelings, must descend the hill:An hour's perfection can't recur."Then follows Paris and full timeFor both to reason: 'Thus with us!'She 'll sigh, 'Thus girls give body and soulAt first word, think they gain the goal,When 't is the starting-place they climb!"'My friend makes verse and gets renown;Have they all fifty years, his peers?He knows the world, firm, quiet and gay;Boys will become as much one day:They 're fools; he cheats, with beard less brown."'For boys say,Love me or I die!He did not say,The truth is, youthI want, who am old and know too much;I'd catch youth: lend me sight and touch!Drop heart's blood where life's wheels grate dry!'"While I should make rejoinder"—(thenIt was no doubt, you ceased that leastLight pressure of my arm in yours)—"'I can conceive of cheaper curesFor a yawning-fit o'er books and men."'What? All I am, was, and might be,All, books taught, art brought, life's whole strife,Painful results since precious, justWere fitly exchanged, in wise disgust,For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea?"'All for a nosegay!—what came first;With fields on flower, untried each side;I rally, need my books and men,And find a nosegay:' drop it, then,No match yet made for best or worst!"That ended me. You judged the porchWe left by, Norman; took our lookAt sea and sky; wondered so fewFind out the place for air and view;Remarked the sun began to scorch;Descended, soon regained the baths,And then, good-by! Years ten since then;Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now,By a window-seat for that cliff-brow,On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths.Now I may speak: you fool, for allYour lore!Whomade things plain in vain?What was the sea for? What, the graySad church, that solitary day,Crosses and graves and swallows' call?Was there naught better than to enjoy?No feat which, done, would make time break,And let us pent-up creatures throughInto eternity, our due?No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?No wise beginning, here and now,What cannot grow complete (earth's feat)And heaven must finish, there and then?No tasting earth's true food for men,Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?No grasping at love, gaining a shareO' the sole spark from God's life at strifeWith death, so, sure of range aboveThe limits here? For us and love,Failure; but, when God fails, despair.This you call wisdom? Thus you addGood unto good again, in vain?You loved, with body worn and weak;I loved, with faculties to seek:Were both loves worthless since ill-clad?Let the mere star-fish in his vaultCrawl in a wash of weed, indeed,Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips:He, whole in body and soul, outstripsMan, found with either in default.But what 's whole can increase no more,Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its sphere.The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!You know not? That I well believe;Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist,Ankle or something. "Pooh," cry you?At any rate she danced, all say,Vilely; her vogue has had its day.Here comes my husband from his whist.
Stop, let me have the truth of that!Is that all true? I say, the dayTen years ago when both of usMet on a morning, friends—as thusWe meet this evening, friends or what?—Did you—because I took your armAnd sillily smiled, "A mass of brassThat sea looks, blazing underneath!"While up the cliff-road edged with heath,We took the turns nor came to harm—Did you consider, "Now makes twiceThat I have seen her, walked and talkedWith this poor pretty thoughtful thing,Whose worth I weigh: she tries to sing;Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice;"Reads verse and thinks she understands;Loves all, at any rate, that's great,Good, beautiful; but much as weDown at the bath-house love the sea,Who breathe its salt and bruise its sands:"While ... do but follow the fishing-gullThat flaps and floats from wave to cave!There's the sea-lover, fair my friend!What then? Be patient, mark and mend!Had you the making of your skull?"And did you, when we faced the churchWith spire and sad slate roof, aloofFrom human fellowship so far,Where a few graveyard crosses are,And garlands for the swallows' perch,—Did you determine, as we steppedO'er the lone stone fence, "Let me getHer for myself, and what's the earthWith all its art, verse, music; worth—Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?"Schumann's our music-maker now;Has his march-movement youth and mouth?Ingres's the modern man that paints;Which will lean on me, of his saints?Heine for songs; for kisses, how?"And did you, when we entered, reachedThe votive frigate, soft aloftRiding on air this hundred years,Safe-smiling at old hopes and fears,—Did you draw profit while she preached?Resolving, "Fools we wise men grow!Yes, I could easily blurt out curtSome question that might find replyAs prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye,And rush of red to cheek and brow:"Thus were a match made, sure and fast,'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the moundWhere, issuing, we shall stand and stayFor one more look at baths and bay,Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last—"A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged and lamed,Famous, however, for verse and worse,Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chairWhen gout and glory seat me there,So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed,—"And this young beauty, round and soundAs a mountain-apple, youth and truthWith loves and doves, at all eventsWith money in the Three per Cents;Whose choice of me would seem profound:—"She might take me as I take her.Perfect the hour would pass, alas!Climb high, love high, what matter? Still,Feet, feelings, must descend the hill:An hour's perfection can't recur."Then follows Paris and full timeFor both to reason: 'Thus with us!'She 'll sigh, 'Thus girls give body and soulAt first word, think they gain the goal,When 't is the starting-place they climb!"'My friend makes verse and gets renown;Have they all fifty years, his peers?He knows the world, firm, quiet and gay;Boys will become as much one day:They 're fools; he cheats, with beard less brown."'For boys say,Love me or I die!He did not say,The truth is, youthI want, who am old and know too much;I'd catch youth: lend me sight and touch!Drop heart's blood where life's wheels grate dry!'"While I should make rejoinder"—(thenIt was no doubt, you ceased that leastLight pressure of my arm in yours)—"'I can conceive of cheaper curesFor a yawning-fit o'er books and men."'What? All I am, was, and might be,All, books taught, art brought, life's whole strife,Painful results since precious, justWere fitly exchanged, in wise disgust,For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea?"'All for a nosegay!—what came first;With fields on flower, untried each side;I rally, need my books and men,And find a nosegay:' drop it, then,No match yet made for best or worst!"That ended me. You judged the porchWe left by, Norman; took our lookAt sea and sky; wondered so fewFind out the place for air and view;Remarked the sun began to scorch;Descended, soon regained the baths,And then, good-by! Years ten since then;Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now,By a window-seat for that cliff-brow,On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths.Now I may speak: you fool, for allYour lore!Whomade things plain in vain?What was the sea for? What, the graySad church, that solitary day,Crosses and graves and swallows' call?Was there naught better than to enjoy?No feat which, done, would make time break,And let us pent-up creatures throughInto eternity, our due?No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?No wise beginning, here and now,What cannot grow complete (earth's feat)And heaven must finish, there and then?No tasting earth's true food for men,Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?No grasping at love, gaining a shareO' the sole spark from God's life at strifeWith death, so, sure of range aboveThe limits here? For us and love,Failure; but, when God fails, despair.This you call wisdom? Thus you addGood unto good again, in vain?You loved, with body worn and weak;I loved, with faculties to seek:Were both loves worthless since ill-clad?Let the mere star-fish in his vaultCrawl in a wash of weed, indeed,Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips:He, whole in body and soul, outstripsMan, found with either in default.But what 's whole can increase no more,Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its sphere.The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!You know not? That I well believe;Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist,Ankle or something. "Pooh," cry you?At any rate she danced, all say,Vilely; her vogue has had its day.Here comes my husband from his whist.
Stop, let me have the truth of that!Is that all true? I say, the dayTen years ago when both of usMet on a morning, friends—as thusWe meet this evening, friends or what?—
Stop, let me have the truth of that!
Is that all true? I say, the day
Ten years ago when both of us
Met on a morning, friends—as thus
We meet this evening, friends or what?—
Did you—because I took your armAnd sillily smiled, "A mass of brassThat sea looks, blazing underneath!"While up the cliff-road edged with heath,We took the turns nor came to harm—
Did you—because I took your arm
And sillily smiled, "A mass of brass
That sea looks, blazing underneath!"
While up the cliff-road edged with heath,
We took the turns nor came to harm—
Did you consider, "Now makes twiceThat I have seen her, walked and talkedWith this poor pretty thoughtful thing,Whose worth I weigh: she tries to sing;Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice;
Did you consider, "Now makes twice
That I have seen her, walked and talked
With this poor pretty thoughtful thing,
Whose worth I weigh: she tries to sing;
Draws, hopes in time the eye grows nice;
"Reads verse and thinks she understands;Loves all, at any rate, that's great,Good, beautiful; but much as weDown at the bath-house love the sea,Who breathe its salt and bruise its sands:
"Reads verse and thinks she understands;
Loves all, at any rate, that's great,
Good, beautiful; but much as we
Down at the bath-house love the sea,
Who breathe its salt and bruise its sands:
"While ... do but follow the fishing-gullThat flaps and floats from wave to cave!There's the sea-lover, fair my friend!What then? Be patient, mark and mend!Had you the making of your skull?"
"While ... do but follow the fishing-gull
That flaps and floats from wave to cave!
There's the sea-lover, fair my friend!
What then? Be patient, mark and mend!
Had you the making of your skull?"
And did you, when we faced the churchWith spire and sad slate roof, aloofFrom human fellowship so far,Where a few graveyard crosses are,And garlands for the swallows' perch,—
And did you, when we faced the church
With spire and sad slate roof, aloof
From human fellowship so far,
Where a few graveyard crosses are,
And garlands for the swallows' perch,—
Did you determine, as we steppedO'er the lone stone fence, "Let me getHer for myself, and what's the earthWith all its art, verse, music; worth—Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?
Did you determine, as we stepped
O'er the lone stone fence, "Let me get
Her for myself, and what's the earth
With all its art, verse, music; worth—
Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?
"Schumann's our music-maker now;Has his march-movement youth and mouth?Ingres's the modern man that paints;Which will lean on me, of his saints?Heine for songs; for kisses, how?"
"Schumann's our music-maker now;
Has his march-movement youth and mouth?
Ingres's the modern man that paints;
Which will lean on me, of his saints?
Heine for songs; for kisses, how?"
And did you, when we entered, reachedThe votive frigate, soft aloftRiding on air this hundred years,Safe-smiling at old hopes and fears,—Did you draw profit while she preached?
And did you, when we entered, reached
The votive frigate, soft aloft
Riding on air this hundred years,
Safe-smiling at old hopes and fears,—
Did you draw profit while she preached?
Resolving, "Fools we wise men grow!Yes, I could easily blurt out curtSome question that might find replyAs prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye,And rush of red to cheek and brow:
Resolving, "Fools we wise men grow!
Yes, I could easily blurt out curt
Some question that might find reply
As prompt in her stopped lips, dropped eye,
And rush of red to cheek and brow:
"Thus were a match made, sure and fast,'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the moundWhere, issuing, we shall stand and stayFor one more look at baths and bay,Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last—
"Thus were a match made, sure and fast,
'Mid the blue weed-flowers round the mound
Where, issuing, we shall stand and stay
For one more look at baths and bay,
Sands, sea-gulls, and the old church last—
"A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged and lamed,Famous, however, for verse and worse,Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chairWhen gout and glory seat me there,So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed,—
"A match 'twixt me, bent, wigged and lamed,
Famous, however, for verse and worse,
Sure of the Fortieth spare Arm-chair
When gout and glory seat me there,
So, one whose love-freaks pass unblamed,—
"And this young beauty, round and soundAs a mountain-apple, youth and truthWith loves and doves, at all eventsWith money in the Three per Cents;Whose choice of me would seem profound:—
"And this young beauty, round and sound
As a mountain-apple, youth and truth
With loves and doves, at all events
With money in the Three per Cents;
Whose choice of me would seem profound:—
"She might take me as I take her.Perfect the hour would pass, alas!Climb high, love high, what matter? Still,Feet, feelings, must descend the hill:An hour's perfection can't recur.
"She might take me as I take her.
Perfect the hour would pass, alas!
Climb high, love high, what matter? Still,
Feet, feelings, must descend the hill:
An hour's perfection can't recur.
"Then follows Paris and full timeFor both to reason: 'Thus with us!'She 'll sigh, 'Thus girls give body and soulAt first word, think they gain the goal,When 't is the starting-place they climb!
"Then follows Paris and full time
For both to reason: 'Thus with us!'
She 'll sigh, 'Thus girls give body and soul
At first word, think they gain the goal,
When 't is the starting-place they climb!
"'My friend makes verse and gets renown;Have they all fifty years, his peers?He knows the world, firm, quiet and gay;Boys will become as much one day:They 're fools; he cheats, with beard less brown.
"'My friend makes verse and gets renown;
Have they all fifty years, his peers?
He knows the world, firm, quiet and gay;
Boys will become as much one day:
They 're fools; he cheats, with beard less brown.
"'For boys say,Love me or I die!He did not say,The truth is, youthI want, who am old and know too much;I'd catch youth: lend me sight and touch!Drop heart's blood where life's wheels grate dry!'
"'For boys say,Love me or I die!
He did not say,The truth is, youth
I want, who am old and know too much;
I'd catch youth: lend me sight and touch!
Drop heart's blood where life's wheels grate dry!'
"While I should make rejoinder"—(thenIt was no doubt, you ceased that leastLight pressure of my arm in yours)—"'I can conceive of cheaper curesFor a yawning-fit o'er books and men.
"While I should make rejoinder"—(then
It was no doubt, you ceased that least
Light pressure of my arm in yours)—
"'I can conceive of cheaper cures
For a yawning-fit o'er books and men.
"'What? All I am, was, and might be,All, books taught, art brought, life's whole strife,Painful results since precious, justWere fitly exchanged, in wise disgust,For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea?
"'What? All I am, was, and might be,
All, books taught, art brought, life's whole strife,
Painful results since precious, just
Were fitly exchanged, in wise disgust,
For two cheeks freshened by youth and sea?
"'All for a nosegay!—what came first;With fields on flower, untried each side;I rally, need my books and men,And find a nosegay:' drop it, then,No match yet made for best or worst!"
"'All for a nosegay!—what came first;
With fields on flower, untried each side;
I rally, need my books and men,
And find a nosegay:' drop it, then,
No match yet made for best or worst!"
That ended me. You judged the porchWe left by, Norman; took our lookAt sea and sky; wondered so fewFind out the place for air and view;Remarked the sun began to scorch;
That ended me. You judged the porch
We left by, Norman; took our look
At sea and sky; wondered so few
Find out the place for air and view;
Remarked the sun began to scorch;
Descended, soon regained the baths,And then, good-by! Years ten since then;Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now,By a window-seat for that cliff-brow,On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths.
Descended, soon regained the baths,
And then, good-by! Years ten since then;
Ten years! We meet: you tell me, now,
By a window-seat for that cliff-brow,
On carpet-stripes for those sand-paths.
Now I may speak: you fool, for allYour lore!Whomade things plain in vain?What was the sea for? What, the graySad church, that solitary day,Crosses and graves and swallows' call?
Now I may speak: you fool, for all
Your lore!Whomade things plain in vain?
What was the sea for? What, the gray
Sad church, that solitary day,
Crosses and graves and swallows' call?
Was there naught better than to enjoy?No feat which, done, would make time break,And let us pent-up creatures throughInto eternity, our due?No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
Was there naught better than to enjoy?
No feat which, done, would make time break,
And let us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due?
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?
No wise beginning, here and now,What cannot grow complete (earth's feat)And heaven must finish, there and then?No tasting earth's true food for men,Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?
No wise beginning, here and now,
What cannot grow complete (earth's feat)
And heaven must finish, there and then?
No tasting earth's true food for men,
Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?
No grasping at love, gaining a shareO' the sole spark from God's life at strifeWith death, so, sure of range aboveThe limits here? For us and love,Failure; but, when God fails, despair.
No grasping at love, gaining a share
O' the sole spark from God's life at strife
With death, so, sure of range above
The limits here? For us and love,
Failure; but, when God fails, despair.
This you call wisdom? Thus you addGood unto good again, in vain?You loved, with body worn and weak;I loved, with faculties to seek:Were both loves worthless since ill-clad?
This you call wisdom? Thus you add
Good unto good again, in vain?
You loved, with body worn and weak;
I loved, with faculties to seek:
Were both loves worthless since ill-clad?
Let the mere star-fish in his vaultCrawl in a wash of weed, indeed,Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips:He, whole in body and soul, outstripsMan, found with either in default.
Let the mere star-fish in his vault
Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed,
Rose-jacynth to the finger-tips:
He, whole in body and soul, outstrips
Man, found with either in default.
But what 's whole can increase no more,Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its sphere.The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!You know not? That I well believe;Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.
But what 's whole can increase no more,
Is dwarfed and dies, since here 's its sphere.
The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!
You know not? That I well believe;
Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.
For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist,Ankle or something. "Pooh," cry you?At any rate she danced, all say,Vilely; her vogue has had its day.Here comes my husband from his whist.
For Stephanie sprained last night her wrist,
Ankle or something. "Pooh," cry you?
At any rate she danced, all say,
Vilely; her vogue has had its day.
Here comes my husband from his whist.
Here was I with my arm and heartAnd brain, all yours for a word, a wantPut into a look—just a look, your part,—While mine, to repay it ... vainest vaunt,Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear,Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show!But I cannot show it; you cannot speakFrom the churchyard neither, miles removed,Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,Which stabs and stops, that the woman I lovedNeeds help in her grave and finds none near,Wants warmth from the heart which sends it—so!Did I speak once angrily, all the drear daysYou lived, you woman I loved so well,Who married the other? Blame or praise,Where was the use then? Time would tell,And the end declare what man for you,What woman for me, was the choice of God.But, Edith dead! no doubting more!I used to sit and look at my lifeAs it rippled and ran till, right before,A great stone stopped it: oh, the strifeOf waves at the stone some devil threwIn my life's midcurrent, thwarting God!But either I thought, "They may churn and chideAwhile, my waves which came for their joyAnd found this horrible stone full-tide:Yet I see just a thread escape, deployThrough the evening-country, silent and safe,And it suffers no more till it finds the sea."Or else I would think, "Perhaps some nightWhen new things happen, a meteor-ballMay slip through the sky in a line of light,And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!"But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may,Watch and wear and wonder who will.Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,"The woman is dead that was none of his;And the man that was none of hers may go!"There's only the past left: worry that!Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat,Rage, its late wearer is laughing at!Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat;Strike stupidly on—"This, this and this,Where I would that a bosom received the blow!"I ought to have done more: once my speech,And once your answer, and there, the end,And Edith was henceforth out of reach!Why, men do more to deserve a friend,Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.Why, better even have burst like a thiefAnd borne you away to a rock for us two,In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief,Then changed to myself again—"I slewMyself in that moment; a ruffian liesSomewhere: your slave, see, born in his place!"What did the other do? You be judge!Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!Give him his six whole years: I grudgeNone of the life with you, nay, loatheMyself that I grudged his start in advanceOf me who could overtake and pass.But, as if he loved you! No, not he,Nor any one else in the world, 'tis plain:Who ever heard that another, freeAs I, young, prosperous, sound and sane,Poured life out, proffered it—"Half a glanceOf those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!"Handsome, were you? 'T is more than they held,More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:I was the scapegrace, this rat belledThe cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched:The others? No head that was turned, no heartBroken, my lady, assure yourself!Each soon made his mind up; so and soMarried a dancer, such and suchStole his friend's wife, stagnated slow,Or maundered, unable to do as much,And muttered of peace where he had no part:While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,—On the whole, you were let alone, I think!So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced;My rival, the proud man,—prize your pinkOf poets! A poet he was! I've guessed:He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh!There was a prize! But we both were tried.Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,Tekel, found wanting, set aside,Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the darkTill comfort come and the last be bled:He? He is tagging your epitaph.If it would only come over again!—Time to be patient with me, and probeThis heart till you punctured the proper vein,Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robeFrom that blank lay-figure your fancy draped,Prick the leathern heart till the—verses spirt!And late it was easy; late, you walkedWhere a friend might meet you; Edith's nameArose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;If I heard good news, you heard the same;When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;I could bide my time, keep alive, alert.And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!I knew a man, was kicked like a dogFrom gutter to cesspool; what cared heSo long as he picked from the filth his prog?He saw youth, beauty and genius die,And jollily lived to his hundredth year.But I will live otherwise: none of such life!At once I begin as I mean to end.Go on with the world, get gold in its strife,Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend!There are two who decline, a woman and I,And enjoy our death in the darkness here.I liked that way you had with your curlsWound to a ball in a net behind:Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin too—what a chin!There were certain ways when you spoke, some wordsThat you know you never could pronounce:You were thin, however; like a bird'sYour hand seemed—some would say, the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.But I turn my back on the world: I takeYour hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.Bid me live, Edith! Let me slakeThirst at your presence! Fear no slips:'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,Full due, love's whole debt,summum jus.My queen shall have high observance, plannedCourtship made perfect, no least lineCrossed without warrant. There you stand,Warm too, and white too: would this wineHad washed all over that body of yours.Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!
Here was I with my arm and heartAnd brain, all yours for a word, a wantPut into a look—just a look, your part,—While mine, to repay it ... vainest vaunt,Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear,Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show!But I cannot show it; you cannot speakFrom the churchyard neither, miles removed,Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,Which stabs and stops, that the woman I lovedNeeds help in her grave and finds none near,Wants warmth from the heart which sends it—so!Did I speak once angrily, all the drear daysYou lived, you woman I loved so well,Who married the other? Blame or praise,Where was the use then? Time would tell,And the end declare what man for you,What woman for me, was the choice of God.But, Edith dead! no doubting more!I used to sit and look at my lifeAs it rippled and ran till, right before,A great stone stopped it: oh, the strifeOf waves at the stone some devil threwIn my life's midcurrent, thwarting God!But either I thought, "They may churn and chideAwhile, my waves which came for their joyAnd found this horrible stone full-tide:Yet I see just a thread escape, deployThrough the evening-country, silent and safe,And it suffers no more till it finds the sea."Or else I would think, "Perhaps some nightWhen new things happen, a meteor-ballMay slip through the sky in a line of light,And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!"But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may,Watch and wear and wonder who will.Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,"The woman is dead that was none of his;And the man that was none of hers may go!"There's only the past left: worry that!Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat,Rage, its late wearer is laughing at!Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat;Strike stupidly on—"This, this and this,Where I would that a bosom received the blow!"I ought to have done more: once my speech,And once your answer, and there, the end,And Edith was henceforth out of reach!Why, men do more to deserve a friend,Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.Why, better even have burst like a thiefAnd borne you away to a rock for us two,In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief,Then changed to myself again—"I slewMyself in that moment; a ruffian liesSomewhere: your slave, see, born in his place!"What did the other do? You be judge!Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!Give him his six whole years: I grudgeNone of the life with you, nay, loatheMyself that I grudged his start in advanceOf me who could overtake and pass.But, as if he loved you! No, not he,Nor any one else in the world, 'tis plain:Who ever heard that another, freeAs I, young, prosperous, sound and sane,Poured life out, proffered it—"Half a glanceOf those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!"Handsome, were you? 'T is more than they held,More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:I was the scapegrace, this rat belledThe cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched:The others? No head that was turned, no heartBroken, my lady, assure yourself!Each soon made his mind up; so and soMarried a dancer, such and suchStole his friend's wife, stagnated slow,Or maundered, unable to do as much,And muttered of peace where he had no part:While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,—On the whole, you were let alone, I think!So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced;My rival, the proud man,—prize your pinkOf poets! A poet he was! I've guessed:He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh!There was a prize! But we both were tried.Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,Tekel, found wanting, set aside,Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the darkTill comfort come and the last be bled:He? He is tagging your epitaph.If it would only come over again!—Time to be patient with me, and probeThis heart till you punctured the proper vein,Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robeFrom that blank lay-figure your fancy draped,Prick the leathern heart till the—verses spirt!And late it was easy; late, you walkedWhere a friend might meet you; Edith's nameArose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;If I heard good news, you heard the same;When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;I could bide my time, keep alive, alert.And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!I knew a man, was kicked like a dogFrom gutter to cesspool; what cared heSo long as he picked from the filth his prog?He saw youth, beauty and genius die,And jollily lived to his hundredth year.But I will live otherwise: none of such life!At once I begin as I mean to end.Go on with the world, get gold in its strife,Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend!There are two who decline, a woman and I,And enjoy our death in the darkness here.I liked that way you had with your curlsWound to a ball in a net behind:Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin too—what a chin!There were certain ways when you spoke, some wordsThat you know you never could pronounce:You were thin, however; like a bird'sYour hand seemed—some would say, the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.But I turn my back on the world: I takeYour hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.Bid me live, Edith! Let me slakeThirst at your presence! Fear no slips:'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,Full due, love's whole debt,summum jus.My queen shall have high observance, plannedCourtship made perfect, no least lineCrossed without warrant. There you stand,Warm too, and white too: would this wineHad washed all over that body of yours.Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!
Here was I with my arm and heartAnd brain, all yours for a word, a wantPut into a look—just a look, your part,—While mine, to repay it ... vainest vaunt,Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear,Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show!But I cannot show it; you cannot speakFrom the churchyard neither, miles removed,Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,Which stabs and stops, that the woman I lovedNeeds help in her grave and finds none near,Wants warmth from the heart which sends it—so!
Here was I with my arm and heart
And brain, all yours for a word, a want
Put into a look—just a look, your part,—
While mine, to repay it ... vainest vaunt,
Were the woman, that's dead, alive to hear,
Had her lover, that's lost, love's proof to show!
But I cannot show it; you cannot speak
From the churchyard neither, miles removed,
Though I feel by a pulse within my cheek,
Which stabs and stops, that the woman I loved
Needs help in her grave and finds none near,
Wants warmth from the heart which sends it—so!
Did I speak once angrily, all the drear daysYou lived, you woman I loved so well,Who married the other? Blame or praise,Where was the use then? Time would tell,And the end declare what man for you,What woman for me, was the choice of God.But, Edith dead! no doubting more!I used to sit and look at my lifeAs it rippled and ran till, right before,A great stone stopped it: oh, the strifeOf waves at the stone some devil threwIn my life's midcurrent, thwarting God!
Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days
You lived, you woman I loved so well,
Who married the other? Blame or praise,
Where was the use then? Time would tell,
And the end declare what man for you,
What woman for me, was the choice of God.
But, Edith dead! no doubting more!
I used to sit and look at my life
As it rippled and ran till, right before,
A great stone stopped it: oh, the strife
Of waves at the stone some devil threw
In my life's midcurrent, thwarting God!
But either I thought, "They may churn and chideAwhile, my waves which came for their joyAnd found this horrible stone full-tide:Yet I see just a thread escape, deployThrough the evening-country, silent and safe,And it suffers no more till it finds the sea."Or else I would think, "Perhaps some nightWhen new things happen, a meteor-ballMay slip through the sky in a line of light,And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!"
But either I thought, "They may churn and chide
Awhile, my waves which came for their joy
And found this horrible stone full-tide:
Yet I see just a thread escape, deploy
Through the evening-country, silent and safe,
And it suffers no more till it finds the sea."
Or else I would think, "Perhaps some night
When new things happen, a meteor-ball
May slip through the sky in a line of light,
And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall,
And my waves no longer champ nor chafe,
Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!"
But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may,Watch and wear and wonder who will.Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,"The woman is dead that was none of his;And the man that was none of hers may go!"There's only the past left: worry that!Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat,Rage, its late wearer is laughing at!Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat;Strike stupidly on—"This, this and this,Where I would that a bosom received the blow!"
But, dead! All 's done with: wait who may,
Watch and wear and wonder who will.
Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!
Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still,
"The woman is dead that was none of his;
And the man that was none of hers may go!"
There's only the past left: worry that!
Wreak, like a bull, on the empty coat,
Rage, its late wearer is laughing at!
Tear the collar to rags, having missed his throat;
Strike stupidly on—"This, this and this,
Where I would that a bosom received the blow!"
I ought to have done more: once my speech,And once your answer, and there, the end,And Edith was henceforth out of reach!Why, men do more to deserve a friend,Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.Why, better even have burst like a thiefAnd borne you away to a rock for us two,In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief,Then changed to myself again—"I slewMyself in that moment; a ruffian liesSomewhere: your slave, see, born in his place!"
I ought to have done more: once my speech,
And once your answer, and there, the end,
And Edith was henceforth out of reach!
Why, men do more to deserve a friend,
Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise,
Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.
Why, better even have burst like a thief
And borne you away to a rock for us two,
In a moment's horror, bright, bloody and brief,
Then changed to myself again—"I slew
Myself in that moment; a ruffian lies
Somewhere: your slave, see, born in his place!"
What did the other do? You be judge!Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!Give him his six whole years: I grudgeNone of the life with you, nay, loatheMyself that I grudged his start in advanceOf me who could overtake and pass.But, as if he loved you! No, not he,Nor any one else in the world, 'tis plain:Who ever heard that another, freeAs I, young, prosperous, sound and sane,Poured life out, proffered it—"Half a glanceOf those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!"
What did the other do? You be judge!
Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!
Give him his six whole years: I grudge
None of the life with you, nay, loathe
Myself that I grudged his start in advance
Of me who could overtake and pass.
But, as if he loved you! No, not he,
Nor any one else in the world, 'tis plain:
Who ever heard that another, free
As I, young, prosperous, sound and sane,
Poured life out, proffered it—"Half a glance
Of those eyes of yours and I drop the glass!"
Handsome, were you? 'T is more than they held,More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:I was the scapegrace, this rat belledThe cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched:The others? No head that was turned, no heartBroken, my lady, assure yourself!Each soon made his mind up; so and soMarried a dancer, such and suchStole his friend's wife, stagnated slow,Or maundered, unable to do as much,And muttered of peace where he had no part:While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,—
Handsome, were you? 'T is more than they held,
More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:
I was the scapegrace, this rat belled
The cat, this fool got his whiskers scratched:
The others? No head that was turned, no heart
Broken, my lady, assure yourself!
Each soon made his mind up; so and so
Married a dancer, such and such
Stole his friend's wife, stagnated slow,
Or maundered, unable to do as much,
And muttered of peace where he had no part:
While, hid in the closet, laid on the shelf,—
On the whole, you were let alone, I think!So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced;My rival, the proud man,—prize your pinkOf poets! A poet he was! I've guessed:He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh!There was a prize! But we both were tried.Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,Tekel, found wanting, set aside,Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the darkTill comfort come and the last be bled:He? He is tagging your epitaph.
On the whole, you were let alone, I think!
So, you looked to the other, who acquiesced;
My rival, the proud man,—prize your pink
Of poets! A poet he was! I've guessed:
He rhymed you his rubbish nobody read,
Loved you and doved you—did not I laugh!
There was a prize! But we both were tried.
Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark,
Tekel, found wanting, set aside,
Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark
Till comfort come and the last be bled:
He? He is tagging your epitaph.
If it would only come over again!—Time to be patient with me, and probeThis heart till you punctured the proper vein,Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robeFrom that blank lay-figure your fancy draped,Prick the leathern heart till the—verses spirt!And late it was easy; late, you walkedWhere a friend might meet you; Edith's nameArose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;If I heard good news, you heard the same;When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;I could bide my time, keep alive, alert.
If it would only come over again!
—Time to be patient with me, and probe
This heart till you punctured the proper vein,
Just to learn what blood is: twitch the robe
From that blank lay-figure your fancy draped,
Prick the leathern heart till the—verses spirt!
And late it was easy; late, you walked
Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name
Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked;
If I heard good news, you heard the same;
When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped;
I could bide my time, keep alive, alert.
And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!I knew a man, was kicked like a dogFrom gutter to cesspool; what cared heSo long as he picked from the filth his prog?He saw youth, beauty and genius die,And jollily lived to his hundredth year.But I will live otherwise: none of such life!At once I begin as I mean to end.Go on with the world, get gold in its strife,Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend!There are two who decline, a woman and I,And enjoy our death in the darkness here.
And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!
I knew a man, was kicked like a dog
From gutter to cesspool; what cared he
So long as he picked from the filth his prog?
He saw youth, beauty and genius die,
And jollily lived to his hundredth year.
But I will live otherwise: none of such life!
At once I begin as I mean to end.
Go on with the world, get gold in its strife,
Give your spouse the slip and betray your friend!
There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here.
I liked that way you had with your curlsWound to a ball in a net behind:Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;And the dented chin too—what a chin!There were certain ways when you spoke, some wordsThat you know you never could pronounce:You were thin, however; like a bird'sYour hand seemed—some would say, the pounceOf a scaly-footed hawk—all but!The world was right when it called you thin.
I liked that way you had with your curls
Wound to a ball in a net behind:
Your cheek was chaste as a Quaker-girl's,
And your mouth—there was never, to my mind,
Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut;
And the dented chin too—what a chin!
There were certain ways when you spoke, some words
That you know you never could pronounce:
You were thin, however; like a bird's
Your hand seemed—some would say, the pounce
Of a scaly-footed hawk—all but!
The world was right when it called you thin.
But I turn my back on the world: I takeYour hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.Bid me live, Edith! Let me slakeThirst at your presence! Fear no slips:'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,Full due, love's whole debt,summum jus.My queen shall have high observance, plannedCourtship made perfect, no least lineCrossed without warrant. There you stand,Warm too, and white too: would this wineHad washed all over that body of yours.Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!
But I turn my back on the world: I take
Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.
Bid me live, Edith! Let me slake
Thirst at your presence! Fear no slips:
'Tis your slave shall pay, while his soul endures,
Full due, love's whole debt,summum jus.
My queen shall have high observance, planned
Courtship made perfect, no least line
Crossed without warrant. There you stand,
Warm too, and white too: would this wine
Had washed all over that body of yours.
Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,—Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,When a great illumination surprises a festal night—Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause.Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.Never to be again! But many more of the kindAs good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mindTo the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor powerWhose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodistWhen eternity affirms the conception of an hour.The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidenceFor the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,—yes,And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,—Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,When a great illumination surprises a festal night—Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause.Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.Never to be again! But many more of the kindAs good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mindTo the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor powerWhose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodistWhen eternity affirms the conception of an hour.The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidenceFor the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,—yes,And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willedArmies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,—Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,—
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.
And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,When a great illumination surprises a festal night—Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.
And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night—
Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.
In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.
In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.
Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.
Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,
But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.
All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause.Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—
All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,
All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:
Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause.
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,
Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:
It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!
Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.Never to be again! But many more of the kindAs good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mindTo the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.
Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.
Never to be again! But many more of the kind
As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind
To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.
Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.
Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor powerWhose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodistWhen eternity affirms the conception of an hour.The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.
And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidenceFor the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.
And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.
Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,—yes,And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.
Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,—yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.
Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made:Our times are in his handWho saith, "A whole I planned,Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"Not that, amassing flowers,Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,Which lily leave and then as best recall?"Not that, admiring stars,It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"Not for such hopes and fearsAnnulling youth's brief years,Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!Rather I prize the doubtLow kinds exist without,Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.Poor vaunt of life indeed,Were man but formed to feedOn joy, to solely seek and find and feast;Such feasting ended, thenAs sure an end to men;Irks care the crop full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?Rejoice we are alliedTo that which doth provideAnd not partake, effect and not receive!A spark disturbs our clod;Nearer we hold of GodWho gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.Then, welcome each rebuffThat turns earth's smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive, and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!For thence,—a paradoxWhich comforts while it mocks,—Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me:A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.What is he but a bruteWhose flesh has soul to suit,Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?To man, propose this test—Thy body at its best,How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?Yet gifts should prove their use:I own the Past profuseOf power each side, perfection every turn:Eyes, ears took in their dole,Brain treasured up the whole;Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"?Not once beat "Praise be thine!I see the whole design,I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too:Perfect I call thy plan:Thanks that I was a man!Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what thou shalt do!"For pleasant is this flesh;Our soul, in its rose-meshPulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:Would we some prize might holdTo match those manifoldPossessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!Let us not always say,"Spite of this flesh to-dayI strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"As the bird wings and sings.Let us cry, "All good thingsAre ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"Therefore I summon ageTo grant youth's heritage,Life's struggle having so far reached its term:Thence shall I pass, approvedA man, for aye removedFrom the developed brute; a God though in the germ.And I shall thereuponTake rest, ere I be goneOnce more on my adventure brave and new:Fearless and unperplexed,When I wage battle next,What weapons to select, what armor to indue.Youth ended, I shall tryMy gain or loss thereby;Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:And I shall weigh the same,Give life its praise or blame:Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.For note, when evening shuts,A certain moment cutsThe deed off, calls the glory from the gray:A whisper from the westShoots—"Add this to the rest,Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."So, still within this life,Though lifted o'er its strife,Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,"This rage was right i' the main,That acquiescence vain:The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."For more is not reservedTo man, with soul just nervedTo act to-morrow what he learns to-day:Here, work enough to watchThe Master work, and catchHints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.As it was better, youthShould strive, through acts uncouth,Toward making, than repose on aught found made:So, better, age, exemptFrom strife, should know, than temptFurther. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!Enough now, if the RightAnd Good and InfiniteBe named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,With knowledge absolute,Subject to no disputeFrom fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.Be there, for once and all,Severed great minds from small,Announced to each his station in the Past!Was I, the world arraigned,Were they, my soul disdained,Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!Now, who shall arbitrate?Ten men love what I hate,Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;Ten, who in ears and eyesMatch me: we all surmise,They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?Not on the vulgar massCalled "work," must sentence pass,Things done, that took the eye and had the price;O'er which, from level stand,The low world laid its hand,Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:But all, the world's coarse thumbAnd finger failed to plumb,So passed in making up the main account;All instincts immature,All purposes unsure,That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:Thoughts hardly to be packedInto a narrow act,Fancies that broke through language and escaped;All I could never be,All, men ignored in me,This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.Ay, note that Potter's wheel,That metaphor! and feelWhy time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—Thou, to whom fools propound,When the wine makes its round,"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"Fool! All that is, at all,Lasts ever, past recall;Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:What entered into thee,Thatwas, is, and shall be:Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.He fixed thee 'mid this danceOf plastic circumstance,This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:Machinery just meantTo give thy soul its bent,Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.What though the earlier grooves,Which ran the laughing lovesAround thy base, no longer pause and press?What though, about thy rim,Skull-things in order grimGrow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?Look not thou down but up!To uses of a cup,The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,The new wine's foaming flow,The Master's lips aglow!Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?But I need, now as then,Thee, God, who mouldest men;And since, not even while the whirl was worst,Did I—to the wheel of lifeWith shapes and colors rife,Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:So, take and use thy work:Amend what flaws may lurk,What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!My times be in thy hand!Perfect the cup as planned!Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made:Our times are in his handWho saith, "A whole I planned,Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"Not that, amassing flowers,Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,Which lily leave and then as best recall?"Not that, admiring stars,It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"Not for such hopes and fearsAnnulling youth's brief years,Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!Rather I prize the doubtLow kinds exist without,Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.Poor vaunt of life indeed,Were man but formed to feedOn joy, to solely seek and find and feast;Such feasting ended, thenAs sure an end to men;Irks care the crop full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?Rejoice we are alliedTo that which doth provideAnd not partake, effect and not receive!A spark disturbs our clod;Nearer we hold of GodWho gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.Then, welcome each rebuffThat turns earth's smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive, and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!For thence,—a paradoxWhich comforts while it mocks,—Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me:A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.What is he but a bruteWhose flesh has soul to suit,Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?To man, propose this test—Thy body at its best,How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?Yet gifts should prove their use:I own the Past profuseOf power each side, perfection every turn:Eyes, ears took in their dole,Brain treasured up the whole;Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"?Not once beat "Praise be thine!I see the whole design,I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too:Perfect I call thy plan:Thanks that I was a man!Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what thou shalt do!"For pleasant is this flesh;Our soul, in its rose-meshPulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:Would we some prize might holdTo match those manifoldPossessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!Let us not always say,"Spite of this flesh to-dayI strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"As the bird wings and sings.Let us cry, "All good thingsAre ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"Therefore I summon ageTo grant youth's heritage,Life's struggle having so far reached its term:Thence shall I pass, approvedA man, for aye removedFrom the developed brute; a God though in the germ.And I shall thereuponTake rest, ere I be goneOnce more on my adventure brave and new:Fearless and unperplexed,When I wage battle next,What weapons to select, what armor to indue.Youth ended, I shall tryMy gain or loss thereby;Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:And I shall weigh the same,Give life its praise or blame:Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.For note, when evening shuts,A certain moment cutsThe deed off, calls the glory from the gray:A whisper from the westShoots—"Add this to the rest,Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."So, still within this life,Though lifted o'er its strife,Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,"This rage was right i' the main,That acquiescence vain:The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."For more is not reservedTo man, with soul just nervedTo act to-morrow what he learns to-day:Here, work enough to watchThe Master work, and catchHints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.As it was better, youthShould strive, through acts uncouth,Toward making, than repose on aught found made:So, better, age, exemptFrom strife, should know, than temptFurther. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!Enough now, if the RightAnd Good and InfiniteBe named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,With knowledge absolute,Subject to no disputeFrom fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.Be there, for once and all,Severed great minds from small,Announced to each his station in the Past!Was I, the world arraigned,Were they, my soul disdained,Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!Now, who shall arbitrate?Ten men love what I hate,Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;Ten, who in ears and eyesMatch me: we all surmise,They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?Not on the vulgar massCalled "work," must sentence pass,Things done, that took the eye and had the price;O'er which, from level stand,The low world laid its hand,Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:But all, the world's coarse thumbAnd finger failed to plumb,So passed in making up the main account;All instincts immature,All purposes unsure,That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:Thoughts hardly to be packedInto a narrow act,Fancies that broke through language and escaped;All I could never be,All, men ignored in me,This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.Ay, note that Potter's wheel,That metaphor! and feelWhy time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—Thou, to whom fools propound,When the wine makes its round,"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"Fool! All that is, at all,Lasts ever, past recall;Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:What entered into thee,Thatwas, is, and shall be:Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.He fixed thee 'mid this danceOf plastic circumstance,This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:Machinery just meantTo give thy soul its bent,Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.What though the earlier grooves,Which ran the laughing lovesAround thy base, no longer pause and press?What though, about thy rim,Skull-things in order grimGrow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?Look not thou down but up!To uses of a cup,The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,The new wine's foaming flow,The Master's lips aglow!Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?But I need, now as then,Thee, God, who mouldest men;And since, not even while the whirl was worst,Did I—to the wheel of lifeWith shapes and colors rife,Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:So, take and use thy work:Amend what flaws may lurk,What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!My times be in thy hand!Perfect the cup as planned!Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Grow old along with me!The best is yet to be,The last of life, for which the first was made:Our times are in his handWho saith, "A whole I planned,Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
Not that, amassing flowers,Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,Which lily leave and then as best recall?"Not that, admiring stars,It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
Not for such hopes and fearsAnnulling youth's brief years,Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!Rather I prize the doubtLow kinds exist without,Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,Were man but formed to feedOn joy, to solely seek and find and feast;Such feasting ended, thenAs sure an end to men;Irks care the crop full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
Rejoice we are alliedTo that which doth provideAnd not partake, effect and not receive!A spark disturbs our clod;Nearer we hold of GodWho gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.
Rejoice we are allied
To that which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe.
Then, welcome each rebuffThat turns earth's smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive, and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
For thence,—a paradoxWhich comforts while it mocks,—Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:What I aspired to be,And was not, comforts me:A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
For thence,—a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
What is he but a bruteWhose flesh has soul to suit,Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?To man, propose this test—Thy body at its best,How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
Yet gifts should prove their use:I own the Past profuseOf power each side, perfection every turn:Eyes, ears took in their dole,Brain treasured up the whole;Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"?
Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"?
Not once beat "Praise be thine!I see the whole design,I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too:Perfect I call thy plan:Thanks that I was a man!Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what thou shalt do!"
Not once beat "Praise be thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now Love perfect too:
Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what thou shalt do!"
For pleasant is this flesh;Our soul, in its rose-meshPulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:Would we some prize might holdTo match those manifoldPossessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!
For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!
Let us not always say,"Spite of this flesh to-dayI strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"As the bird wings and sings.Let us cry, "All good thingsAre ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"
Let us not always say,
"Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
As the bird wings and sings.
Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"
Therefore I summon ageTo grant youth's heritage,Life's struggle having so far reached its term:Thence shall I pass, approvedA man, for aye removedFrom the developed brute; a God though in the germ.
Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.
And I shall thereuponTake rest, ere I be goneOnce more on my adventure brave and new:Fearless and unperplexed,When I wage battle next,What weapons to select, what armor to indue.
And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.
Youth ended, I shall tryMy gain or loss thereby;Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:And I shall weigh the same,Give life its praise or blame:Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
For note, when evening shuts,A certain moment cutsThe deed off, calls the glory from the gray:A whisper from the westShoots—"Add this to the rest,Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."
For note, when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whisper from the west
Shoots—"Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."
So, still within this life,Though lifted o'er its strife,Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,"This rage was right i' the main,That acquiescence vain:The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."
So, still within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
"This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."
For more is not reservedTo man, with soul just nervedTo act to-morrow what he learns to-day:Here, work enough to watchThe Master work, and catchHints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
As it was better, youthShould strive, through acts uncouth,Toward making, than repose on aught found made:So, better, age, exemptFrom strife, should know, than temptFurther. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!
As it was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!
Enough now, if the RightAnd Good and InfiniteBe named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,With knowledge absolute,Subject to no disputeFrom fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Enough now, if the Right
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Be there, for once and all,Severed great minds from small,Announced to each his station in the Past!Was I, the world arraigned,Were they, my soul disdained,Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate?Ten men love what I hate,Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;Ten, who in ears and eyesMatch me: we all surmise,They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
Not on the vulgar massCalled "work," must sentence pass,Things done, that took the eye and had the price;O'er which, from level stand,The low world laid its hand,Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work," must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all, the world's coarse thumbAnd finger failed to plumb,So passed in making up the main account;All instincts immature,All purposes unsure,That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packedInto a narrow act,Fancies that broke through language and escaped;All I could never be,All, men ignored in me,This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Ay, note that Potter's wheel,That metaphor! and feelWhy time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—Thou, to whom fools propound,When the wine makes its round,"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"
Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"
Fool! All that is, at all,Lasts ever, past recall;Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:What entered into thee,Thatwas, is, and shall be:Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
Thatwas, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee 'mid this danceOf plastic circumstance,This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:Machinery just meantTo give thy soul its bent,Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
He fixed thee 'mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
What though the earlier grooves,Which ran the laughing lovesAround thy base, no longer pause and press?What though, about thy rim,Skull-things in order grimGrow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
What though the earlier grooves,
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
Look not thou down but up!To uses of a cup,The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,The new wine's foaming flow,The Master's lips aglow!Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips aglow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
But I need, now as then,Thee, God, who mouldest men;And since, not even while the whirl was worst,Did I—to the wheel of lifeWith shapes and colors rife,Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake thy thirst:
So, take and use thy work:Amend what flaws may lurk,What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!My times be in thy hand!Perfect the cup as planned!Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
So, take and use thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek,And goeth fromEpsilondown toMu:Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,Covered with cloth of hair, and letteredXi,From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace:MuandEpsilonstand for my own name.I may not write it, but I make a crossTo show I wait His coming, with the rest,And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,Or else the lappet of a linen robe,Into the water-vessel, lay it right,And cool his forehead just above the eyes,The while a brother, kneeling either side,Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,—He is not so far gone but he might speak."This did not happen in the outer cave,Nor in the secret chamber of the rock,Where, sixty days since the decree was cut,We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,And waited for his dying all the while;But in the midmost grotto: since noon's lightReached there a little, and we would not loseThe last of what might happen on his face.I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,And brought him from the chamber in the depths,And laid him in the light where we might see:For certain smiles began about his mouth,And his lids moved, presageful of the end.Beyond, and halfway up the mouth o' the cave,The Bactrian convert, having his desire,Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goatThat gave us milk, on rags of various herb,Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps alive:So that if any thief or soldier passed,(Because the persecution was aware,)Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave.Outside was all noon and the burning blue."Here is wine," answered Xanthus,—dropped a drop;I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left:But Valens had bethought him, and producedAnd broke a ball of nard, and made perfume.Only, he did—not so much wake, as—turnAnd smile a little, as a sleeper doesIf any dear one call him, touch his face—And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed.Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran,Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought,And fetched the seventh plate of graven leadOut of the secret chamber, found a place,Pressing with finger on the deeper dints,And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming first,"I am the Resurrection and the Life."Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once,And sat up of himself, and looked at us;And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cryLike the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,As signal we were safe, from time to time.First he said, "If a friend declared to me,This my son Valens, this my other son,Were James and Peter,—nay, declared as wellThis lad was very John,—I could believe!—Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe:So is myself withdrawn into my depths,The soul retreated from the perished brainWhence it was wont to feel and use the worldThrough these dull members, done with long ago.Yet I myself remain; I feel myself:And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!"[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,How divers persons witness in each man,Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,A soul of each and all the bodily parts,Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,And has the use of earth, and ends the manDownward: but, tending upward for advice,Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the next soul, which, seated in the brain,Useth the first with its collected use,And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows:Which, duly tending upward in its turn,Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the last soul, that uses both the first,Subsisting whether they assist or no,And, constituting man's self, is what Is—And leans upon the former, makes it play,As that played off the first: and, tending up,Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the manUpward in that dread point of intercourse,Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.I give the glossa as Theotypas.]And then, "A stick, once fire from end to end;Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itselfA little where the fire was: thus I urgeThe soul that served me, till it task once moreWhat ashes of my brain have kept their shape,And these make effort on the last o' the flesh,Trying to taste again the truth of things"—(He smiled)—"their very superficial truth;As that ye are my sons, that it is longSince James and Peter had release by death,And I am only he, your brother John,Who saw and heard, and could remember all.Remember all! It is not much to say.What if the truth broke on me from aboveAs once and ofttimes? Such might hap again:Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass,The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen—I who now shudder only and surmise'How did your brother bear that sight and live?'"If I live yet, it is for good, more loveThrough me to men: be naught but ashes hereThat keep awhile my semblance, who was John,—Still, when they scatter, there is left on earthNo one alive who knew (consider this!)—Saw with his eyes and handled with his handsThat which was from the first, the Word of Life.How will it be when none more saith 'I saw'?"Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops.Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach,I went, for many years, about the world,Saying 'It was so; so I heard and saw,'Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.Afterward came the message to myselfIn Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach,But simply listen, take a book and write,Nor set down other than the given word,With nothing left to my arbitramentTo choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,No call to write again, I found a way,And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taughtMen should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe;Or I would pen a letter to a friendAnd urge the same as friend, nor less nor more:Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.But at the last, why, I seemed left aliveLike a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I faredWhen there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;Left to repeat, 'I saw, I heard, I knew,'And go all over the old ground again,With Antichrist already in the world,And many Antichrists, who answered prompt,'Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget:Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?'I never thought to call down fire on such,Or, as in wonderful and early days,Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;But patient stated much of the Lord's lifeForgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:Since much that at the first, in deed and word,Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,Fed through such years, familiar with such light,Guarded and guided still to see and speak)Of new significance and fresh result;What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,And named them in the Gospel I have writ.For men said, 'It is getting long ago:Where is the promise of his coming?'—askedThese young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,Since I was there, and helpful in my age;And, in the main, I think such men believed.Finally, thus endeavoring, I fell sick,Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.Yet now I wake in such decrepitudeAs I had slidden down and fallen afar,Past even the presence of my former self,Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,Till I am found away from my own world,Feeling for foothold through a blank profound,Along with unborn people in strange lands,Who say—I hear said or conceive they say—'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'"And how shall I assure them? Can they share—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strengthAbout each spirit, that needs must bide its time,Living and learning still as years assistWhich wear the thickness thin, and let man see—With me who hardly am withheld at all,But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,Lie bare to the universal prick of light?Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.To me, that story—ay, that Life and DeathOf which I wrote 'it was'—to me, it is;—Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else.Is not God now i' the world his power first made?Is not his love at issue still with sin,Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?Yea, and the Resurrection and UpriseTo the right hand of the throne—what is it beside,When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods my soul,And, as I saw the sin and death, even soSee I the need yet transiency of both,The good and glory consummated thence?I saw the power; I see the Love, once weak,Resume the Power: and in this word 'I see,'Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of bothThat moving o'er the spirit of man, unblindsHis eye and bids him look. These are, I see;But ye, the children, his beloved ones too,Ye need,—as I should use an optic glassI wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world,It had been given a crafty smith to make;A tube, he turned on objects brought too close,Lying confusedly insubordinateFor the unassisted eye to master once:Look through his tube, at distance now they lay,Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear!Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truthI see, reduced to plain historic fact,Diminished into clearness, proved a pointAnd far away: ye would withdraw your senseFrom out eternity, strain it upon time.Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,As though a star should open out, all sides,Grow the world on you, as it is my world."For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermostSuch prize despite the envy of the world,And, having gained truth, keep truth: that is all.But see the double way wherein we are led,How the soul learns diversely from the flesh!With flesh, that hath so little time to stay,And yields mere basement for the soul's emprise,Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light,And warmth was cherishing and food was choiceTo every man's flesh, thousand years ago,As now to yours and mine; the body sprangAt once to the height, and stayed: but the soul,—no!Since sages who, this noontide, meditateIn Rome or Athens, may descry some pointOf the eternal power, hid yestereve;And, as thereby the power's whole mass extends,So much extends the æther floating o'erThe love that tops the might, the Christ in God.Then, as new lessons shall be learned in theseTill earth's work stop and useless time run out,So duly, daily, needs provision beFor keeping the soul's prowess possible,Building new barriers as the old decay,Saving us from evasion of life's proof,Putting the question ever, 'Does God love,And will ye hold that truth against the world?'Ye know there needs no second proof with goodGained for our flesh from any earthly source:We might go freezing, ages,—give us fire,Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth,And guard it safe through every chance, ye know!That fable of Prometheus and his theft,How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows old(I have been used to hear the pagans own)And out of mind; but fire, howe'er its birth,Here is it, precious to the sophist nowWho laughs the myth of Æschylus to scorn,As precious to those satyrs of his play,Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing.While were it so with the soul,—this gift of truthOnce grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sureTo prosper as the body's gain is wont,—Why, man's probation would conclude, his earthCrumble; for he both reasons and decides,Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fireFor gold or purple once he knows its worth?Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain?Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift,Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact,And straightway in his life acknowledge it,As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.Sigh ye, 'It had been easier once than now'?To give you answer I am left alive;Look at me who was present from the first!Ye know what things I saw; then came a test,My first, befitting me who so had seen:'Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, himWho trod the sea and brought the dead to life?What should wring this from thee!'—ye laugh and ask.What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise,The sudden Roman faces, violent hands,And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that,And it is written, 'I forsook and fled:'There was my trial, and it ended thus.Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow:Another year or two,—what little child,What tender woman that had seen no leastOf all my sights, but barely heard them told,Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God?Well, was truth safe forever, then? Not so.Already had begun the silent workWhereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt.Teachers were busy, whispering 'All is trueAs the aged ones report: but youth can reachWhere age gropes dimly, weak with stir and strain,And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.'Thus, what the Roman's lowered spear was found,A bar to me who touched and handled truth,Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd tongue,This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates,Till imminent was the outcry 'Save our Christ!'Whereon I stated much of the Lord's lifeForgotten or misdelivered, and let it work.Such work done, as it will be, what comes next?What do I hear say, or conceive men say,'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'"Is this indeed a burden for late days,And may I help to bear it with you all,Using my weakness which becomes your strength?For if a babe were born inside this grot,Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun,Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light's place,—One loving him and wishful he should learn,Would much rejoice himself was blinded firstMonth by month here, so made to understandHow eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss:I think I could explain to such a childThere was more glow outside than gleams he caught,Ay, nor need urge 'I saw it, so believe!'It is a heavy burden you shall bearIn latter days, new lands, or old grown strange,Left without me, which must be very soon.What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it!I see you stand conversing, each new face,Either in fields, of yellow summer eves,On islets yet unnamed amid the sea;Or pace for shelter 'neath a porticoOut of the crowd in some enormous townWhere now the larks sing in a solitude;Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sandIdly conjectured to be Ephesus:And no one asks his fellow any more'Where is the promise of his coming?' but'Was he revealed in any of his lives,As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?'"Quick, for time presses, tell the whole mind out,And let us ask and answer and be saved!My book speaks on, because it cannot pass;One listens quietly, nor scoffs but pleads,'Here is a tale of things done ages since;What truth was ever told the second day?Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for naught.Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love,And what we love most, power and love in one,Let us acknowledge on the record here,Accepting these in Christ: must Christ then be?Has he been? Did not we ourselves make him?Our mind receives but what it holds, no more.First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ—A proof we comprehend his love, a proofWe had such love already in ourselves,Knew first what else we should not recognize.'T is mere projection from man's inmost mind,And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back,Becomes accounted somewhat out of him;He throws it up in air, it drops down earth's,With shape, name, story added, man's old way.How prove you Christ came otherwise at least?Next try the power: he made and rules the world:Certes there is a world once made, now ruled,Unless things have been ever as we see.Our sires declared a charioteer's yoked steedsBrought the sun up the east and down the west,Which only of itself now rises, sets,As if a hand impelled it and a will,—Thus they long thought, they who had will and hands:But the new question's whisper is distinct,Wherefore must all force needs be like ourselves?We have the hands, the will; what made and drivesThe sun is force, is law, is named, not known,While will and love we do know; marks of these,Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare—As that, to punish or reward our race,The sun at undue times arose or setOr else stood still: what do not men affirm?But earth requires as urgently rewardOr punishment to-day as years ago,And none expects the sun will interpose:Therefore it was mere passion and mistake,Or erring zeal for right, which changed the truth.Go back, far, farther, to the birth of things;Ever the will, the intelligence, the love,Man's!—which he gives, supposing he but finds,As late he gave head, body, hands and feet,To help these in what forms he called his gods.First, Jove's brow, Juno's eyes were swept away,But Jove's wrath, Juno's pride continued long:As last, will, power, and love discarded these,So law in turn discards power, love, and will.What proveth God is otherwise at least?All else, projection from the mind of man!"Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong,But place my gospel where I put my hands."I say that man was made to grow, not stop;That help, he needed once, and needs no more,Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn:For he hath new needs, and new helps to these.This imports solely, man should mount on eachNew height in view; the help whereby he mounts,The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.Man apprehends him newly at each stageWhereat earth's ladder drops, its service done;And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigsTo show inside lie germs of herbs unborn,And check the careless step would spoil their birth;But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go,Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds,It is no longer for old twigs ye look,Which proved once underneath lay store of seed,But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast,For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain,Nor miracles need prove it any more.Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade 'wareAt first of root and stem, saved both till nowFrom trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat.What? Was man made a wheelwork to wind up,And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?No!—grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:May learn a thousand things, not twice the same."This might be pagan teaching: now hear mine."I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile,Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn.I fed the babe whether it would or no:I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!I cry now, 'Urgest thou,for I am shrewdAnd smile at stories how John's word could cure—Repeat that miracle and take my faith?'I say, that miracle was duly wroughtWhen, save for it, no faith was possible.Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world,Whether the change came from our minds which seeOf shows o' the world so much as and no moreThan God wills for his purpose,—(what do ISee now, suppose you, there where you see rockRound us?)—I know not; such was the effect,So faith grew, making void more miraclesBecause too much: they would compel, not help.I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved?In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof,Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!"For I say, this is death and the sole death,When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,And lack of love from love made manifest;A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes;A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves.With ignorance was surety of a cure.When man, appalled at nature, questioned first,'What if there lurk a might behind this might?'He needed satisfaction God could give,And did give, as ye have the written word:But when he finds might still redouble might,Yet asks, 'Since all is might, what use of will?'—Will, the one source of might,—he being manWith a man's will and a man's might, to teachIn little how the two combine in large,—That man has turned round on himself and stands,Which in the course of nature is, to die."And when man questioned, 'What if there be loveBehind the will and might, as real as they?'—He needed satisfaction God could give,And did give, as ye have the written word:But when, beholding that love everywhere,He reasons, 'Since such love is everywhere,And since ourselves can love and would be loved,We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,'—How shall ye help this man who knows himself,That he must love and would be loved again,Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ,Rejecteth Christ through very need of him?The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flagsLoaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies."If he rejoin, 'But this was all the whileA trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee,Thy story of the places, names and dates,Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise,—Thy prior truth, at last discovered none,Whence now the second suffers detriment.What good of giving knowledge if, becauseO' the manner of the gift, its profit fail?And why refuse what modicum of helpHad stopped the after-doubt, impossibleI' the face of tenth—truth absolute, uniform?Why must I hit of this and miss of that,Distinguish just as I be weak or strong,And not ask of thee and have answer prompt,Was this once, was it not once?—then and nowAnd evermore, plain truth from man to man.Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's?Put question of his famous play againHow for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched,And carried in a cane and brought to earth:The fact is in the fable, cry the wise,Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact,Though fire be spirit and produced on earth.As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale:Why breed in us perplexity, mistake,Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?'"I answer, Have ye yet to argue outThe very primal thesis, plainest law,—Man is not God but hath God's end to serve,A master to obey, a course to take,Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become?Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,From vain to real, from mistake to fact,From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.How could man have progression otherwise?Before the point was mooted 'What is God?'No savage man inquired 'What am myself?'Much less replied, 'First, last, and best of things.'Man takes that title now if he believesMight can exist with neither will nor love,In God's case—what he names now Nature's Law—While in himself he recognizes loveNo less than might and will: and rightly takes.Since if man prove the sole existent thingWhere these combine, whatever their degree,However weak the might or will or love,So they be found there, put in evidence,—He is as surely higher in the scaleThan any might with neither love nor will,As life, apparent in the poorest midge,(When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing,)Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self—Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!Thus, man proves best and highest—God, in fine,And thus the victory leads but to defeat,The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall,His life becomes impossible, which is death."But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouchHe is mere man, and in humilityNeither may know God nor mistake himself;I point to the immediate consequenceAnd say, by such confession straight he fallsInto man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,Made to know that he can know and not more:Lower than God who knows all and can all,Higher than beasts which know and can so farAs each beast's limit, perfect to an end,Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;While man knows partly but conceives beside,Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,And in this striving, this converting airInto a solid he may grasp and use,Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.Such progress could no more attend his soulWere all it struggles after found at firstAnd guesses changed to knowledge absolute,Than motion wait his body, were all elseThan it the solid earth on every side,Where now through space he moves from rest to rest.Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expectHe could not, what he knows now, know at first;What he considers that he knows to-day,Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;Getting increase of knowledge, since he learnsBecause he lives, which is to be a man,Set to instruct himself by his past self:First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.God's gift was that man should conceive of truthAnd yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,As midway help till he reach fact indeed.The statuary ere he mould a shapeBoasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and nextThe aspiration to produce the same;So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout,Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see:'Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.How were it had he cried, 'I see no face,No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay'?Rather commend him that he clapped his hands,And laughed 'It is my shape and lives again!'Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth,Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeedIn what is still flesh-imitating clay.Right in you, right in him, such way be man's!God only makes the live shape at a jet.Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship?The pattern on the Mount subsists no more,Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness;But copies, Moses strove to make thereby,Serve still and are replaced as time requires:By these, make newest vessels, reach the type!If ye demur, this judgment on your head,Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law,Indulging every instinct of the soulThere where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!"Such is the burden of the latest time.I have survived to hear it with my ears,Answer it with my lips: does this suffice?For if there be a further woe than such,Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand,So long as any pulse is left in mine,May I be absent even longer yet,Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss,Though I should tarry a new hundred years!"But he was dead: 't was about noon, the daySomewhat declining: we five buried himThat eve, and then, dividing, went five ways,And I, disguised, returned to Ephesus.By this, the cave's mouth must be filled with sand.Valens is lost, I know not of his trace;The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,And could not write nor speak, but only loved:So, lest the memory of this go quite,Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts,I tell the same to Phœbas, whom believe!For many look again to find that face,Beloved John's to whom I ministered,Somewhere in life about the world; they err:Either mistaking what was darkly spokeAt ending of his book, as he relates,Or misconceiving somewhat of this speechScattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose.Believe ye will not see him any moreAbout the world with his divine regard!For all was as I say, and now the manLies as he lay once, breast to breast with God.[Cerinthus read and mused; one added this:"If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of menMere man, the first and best but nothing more,—Account him, for reward of what he was,Now and forever, wretchedest of all.For see; himself conceived of life as love,Conceived of love as what must enter in,Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved:Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for him.Well, he is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward.But by this time are many souls set free,And very many still retained alive:Nay, should his coming be delayed awhile,Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute),See if, for every finger of thy hands,There be not found, that day the world shall end,Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's wordThat he will grow incorporate with all,With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do.Call Christ, then, the illimitable God,Or lost!"But 't was Cerinthus that is lost.]
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek,And goeth fromEpsilondown toMu:Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,Covered with cloth of hair, and letteredXi,From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace:MuandEpsilonstand for my own name.I may not write it, but I make a crossTo show I wait His coming, with the rest,And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,Or else the lappet of a linen robe,Into the water-vessel, lay it right,And cool his forehead just above the eyes,The while a brother, kneeling either side,Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,—He is not so far gone but he might speak."This did not happen in the outer cave,Nor in the secret chamber of the rock,Where, sixty days since the decree was cut,We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,And waited for his dying all the while;But in the midmost grotto: since noon's lightReached there a little, and we would not loseThe last of what might happen on his face.I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,And brought him from the chamber in the depths,And laid him in the light where we might see:For certain smiles began about his mouth,And his lids moved, presageful of the end.Beyond, and halfway up the mouth o' the cave,The Bactrian convert, having his desire,Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goatThat gave us milk, on rags of various herb,Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps alive:So that if any thief or soldier passed,(Because the persecution was aware,)Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave.Outside was all noon and the burning blue."Here is wine," answered Xanthus,—dropped a drop;I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left:But Valens had bethought him, and producedAnd broke a ball of nard, and made perfume.Only, he did—not so much wake, as—turnAnd smile a little, as a sleeper doesIf any dear one call him, touch his face—And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed.Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran,Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought,And fetched the seventh plate of graven leadOut of the secret chamber, found a place,Pressing with finger on the deeper dints,And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming first,"I am the Resurrection and the Life."Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once,And sat up of himself, and looked at us;And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cryLike the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,As signal we were safe, from time to time.First he said, "If a friend declared to me,This my son Valens, this my other son,Were James and Peter,—nay, declared as wellThis lad was very John,—I could believe!—Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe:So is myself withdrawn into my depths,The soul retreated from the perished brainWhence it was wont to feel and use the worldThrough these dull members, done with long ago.Yet I myself remain; I feel myself:And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!"[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,How divers persons witness in each man,Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,A soul of each and all the bodily parts,Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,And has the use of earth, and ends the manDownward: but, tending upward for advice,Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the next soul, which, seated in the brain,Useth the first with its collected use,And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows:Which, duly tending upward in its turn,Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the last soul, that uses both the first,Subsisting whether they assist or no,And, constituting man's self, is what Is—And leans upon the former, makes it play,As that played off the first: and, tending up,Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the manUpward in that dread point of intercourse,Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.I give the glossa as Theotypas.]And then, "A stick, once fire from end to end;Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itselfA little where the fire was: thus I urgeThe soul that served me, till it task once moreWhat ashes of my brain have kept their shape,And these make effort on the last o' the flesh,Trying to taste again the truth of things"—(He smiled)—"their very superficial truth;As that ye are my sons, that it is longSince James and Peter had release by death,And I am only he, your brother John,Who saw and heard, and could remember all.Remember all! It is not much to say.What if the truth broke on me from aboveAs once and ofttimes? Such might hap again:Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass,The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen—I who now shudder only and surmise'How did your brother bear that sight and live?'"If I live yet, it is for good, more loveThrough me to men: be naught but ashes hereThat keep awhile my semblance, who was John,—Still, when they scatter, there is left on earthNo one alive who knew (consider this!)—Saw with his eyes and handled with his handsThat which was from the first, the Word of Life.How will it be when none more saith 'I saw'?"Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops.Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach,I went, for many years, about the world,Saying 'It was so; so I heard and saw,'Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.Afterward came the message to myselfIn Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach,But simply listen, take a book and write,Nor set down other than the given word,With nothing left to my arbitramentTo choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,No call to write again, I found a way,And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taughtMen should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe;Or I would pen a letter to a friendAnd urge the same as friend, nor less nor more:Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.But at the last, why, I seemed left aliveLike a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I faredWhen there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;Left to repeat, 'I saw, I heard, I knew,'And go all over the old ground again,With Antichrist already in the world,And many Antichrists, who answered prompt,'Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget:Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?'I never thought to call down fire on such,Or, as in wonderful and early days,Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;But patient stated much of the Lord's lifeForgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:Since much that at the first, in deed and word,Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,Fed through such years, familiar with such light,Guarded and guided still to see and speak)Of new significance and fresh result;What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,And named them in the Gospel I have writ.For men said, 'It is getting long ago:Where is the promise of his coming?'—askedThese young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,Since I was there, and helpful in my age;And, in the main, I think such men believed.Finally, thus endeavoring, I fell sick,Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.Yet now I wake in such decrepitudeAs I had slidden down and fallen afar,Past even the presence of my former self,Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,Till I am found away from my own world,Feeling for foothold through a blank profound,Along with unborn people in strange lands,Who say—I hear said or conceive they say—'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'"And how shall I assure them? Can they share—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strengthAbout each spirit, that needs must bide its time,Living and learning still as years assistWhich wear the thickness thin, and let man see—With me who hardly am withheld at all,But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,Lie bare to the universal prick of light?Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.To me, that story—ay, that Life and DeathOf which I wrote 'it was'—to me, it is;—Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else.Is not God now i' the world his power first made?Is not his love at issue still with sin,Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?Yea, and the Resurrection and UpriseTo the right hand of the throne—what is it beside,When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods my soul,And, as I saw the sin and death, even soSee I the need yet transiency of both,The good and glory consummated thence?I saw the power; I see the Love, once weak,Resume the Power: and in this word 'I see,'Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of bothThat moving o'er the spirit of man, unblindsHis eye and bids him look. These are, I see;But ye, the children, his beloved ones too,Ye need,—as I should use an optic glassI wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world,It had been given a crafty smith to make;A tube, he turned on objects brought too close,Lying confusedly insubordinateFor the unassisted eye to master once:Look through his tube, at distance now they lay,Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear!Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truthI see, reduced to plain historic fact,Diminished into clearness, proved a pointAnd far away: ye would withdraw your senseFrom out eternity, strain it upon time.Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,As though a star should open out, all sides,Grow the world on you, as it is my world."For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermostSuch prize despite the envy of the world,And, having gained truth, keep truth: that is all.But see the double way wherein we are led,How the soul learns diversely from the flesh!With flesh, that hath so little time to stay,And yields mere basement for the soul's emprise,Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light,And warmth was cherishing and food was choiceTo every man's flesh, thousand years ago,As now to yours and mine; the body sprangAt once to the height, and stayed: but the soul,—no!Since sages who, this noontide, meditateIn Rome or Athens, may descry some pointOf the eternal power, hid yestereve;And, as thereby the power's whole mass extends,So much extends the æther floating o'erThe love that tops the might, the Christ in God.Then, as new lessons shall be learned in theseTill earth's work stop and useless time run out,So duly, daily, needs provision beFor keeping the soul's prowess possible,Building new barriers as the old decay,Saving us from evasion of life's proof,Putting the question ever, 'Does God love,And will ye hold that truth against the world?'Ye know there needs no second proof with goodGained for our flesh from any earthly source:We might go freezing, ages,—give us fire,Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth,And guard it safe through every chance, ye know!That fable of Prometheus and his theft,How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows old(I have been used to hear the pagans own)And out of mind; but fire, howe'er its birth,Here is it, precious to the sophist nowWho laughs the myth of Æschylus to scorn,As precious to those satyrs of his play,Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing.While were it so with the soul,—this gift of truthOnce grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sureTo prosper as the body's gain is wont,—Why, man's probation would conclude, his earthCrumble; for he both reasons and decides,Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fireFor gold or purple once he knows its worth?Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain?Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift,Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact,And straightway in his life acknowledge it,As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.Sigh ye, 'It had been easier once than now'?To give you answer I am left alive;Look at me who was present from the first!Ye know what things I saw; then came a test,My first, befitting me who so had seen:'Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, himWho trod the sea and brought the dead to life?What should wring this from thee!'—ye laugh and ask.What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise,The sudden Roman faces, violent hands,And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that,And it is written, 'I forsook and fled:'There was my trial, and it ended thus.Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow:Another year or two,—what little child,What tender woman that had seen no leastOf all my sights, but barely heard them told,Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God?Well, was truth safe forever, then? Not so.Already had begun the silent workWhereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt.Teachers were busy, whispering 'All is trueAs the aged ones report: but youth can reachWhere age gropes dimly, weak with stir and strain,And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.'Thus, what the Roman's lowered spear was found,A bar to me who touched and handled truth,Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd tongue,This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates,Till imminent was the outcry 'Save our Christ!'Whereon I stated much of the Lord's lifeForgotten or misdelivered, and let it work.Such work done, as it will be, what comes next?What do I hear say, or conceive men say,'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'"Is this indeed a burden for late days,And may I help to bear it with you all,Using my weakness which becomes your strength?For if a babe were born inside this grot,Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun,Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light's place,—One loving him and wishful he should learn,Would much rejoice himself was blinded firstMonth by month here, so made to understandHow eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss:I think I could explain to such a childThere was more glow outside than gleams he caught,Ay, nor need urge 'I saw it, so believe!'It is a heavy burden you shall bearIn latter days, new lands, or old grown strange,Left without me, which must be very soon.What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it!I see you stand conversing, each new face,Either in fields, of yellow summer eves,On islets yet unnamed amid the sea;Or pace for shelter 'neath a porticoOut of the crowd in some enormous townWhere now the larks sing in a solitude;Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sandIdly conjectured to be Ephesus:And no one asks his fellow any more'Where is the promise of his coming?' but'Was he revealed in any of his lives,As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?'"Quick, for time presses, tell the whole mind out,And let us ask and answer and be saved!My book speaks on, because it cannot pass;One listens quietly, nor scoffs but pleads,'Here is a tale of things done ages since;What truth was ever told the second day?Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for naught.Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love,And what we love most, power and love in one,Let us acknowledge on the record here,Accepting these in Christ: must Christ then be?Has he been? Did not we ourselves make him?Our mind receives but what it holds, no more.First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ—A proof we comprehend his love, a proofWe had such love already in ourselves,Knew first what else we should not recognize.'T is mere projection from man's inmost mind,And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back,Becomes accounted somewhat out of him;He throws it up in air, it drops down earth's,With shape, name, story added, man's old way.How prove you Christ came otherwise at least?Next try the power: he made and rules the world:Certes there is a world once made, now ruled,Unless things have been ever as we see.Our sires declared a charioteer's yoked steedsBrought the sun up the east and down the west,Which only of itself now rises, sets,As if a hand impelled it and a will,—Thus they long thought, they who had will and hands:But the new question's whisper is distinct,Wherefore must all force needs be like ourselves?We have the hands, the will; what made and drivesThe sun is force, is law, is named, not known,While will and love we do know; marks of these,Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare—As that, to punish or reward our race,The sun at undue times arose or setOr else stood still: what do not men affirm?But earth requires as urgently rewardOr punishment to-day as years ago,And none expects the sun will interpose:Therefore it was mere passion and mistake,Or erring zeal for right, which changed the truth.Go back, far, farther, to the birth of things;Ever the will, the intelligence, the love,Man's!—which he gives, supposing he but finds,As late he gave head, body, hands and feet,To help these in what forms he called his gods.First, Jove's brow, Juno's eyes were swept away,But Jove's wrath, Juno's pride continued long:As last, will, power, and love discarded these,So law in turn discards power, love, and will.What proveth God is otherwise at least?All else, projection from the mind of man!"Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong,But place my gospel where I put my hands."I say that man was made to grow, not stop;That help, he needed once, and needs no more,Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn:For he hath new needs, and new helps to these.This imports solely, man should mount on eachNew height in view; the help whereby he mounts,The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.Man apprehends him newly at each stageWhereat earth's ladder drops, its service done;And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigsTo show inside lie germs of herbs unborn,And check the careless step would spoil their birth;But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go,Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds,It is no longer for old twigs ye look,Which proved once underneath lay store of seed,But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast,For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain,Nor miracles need prove it any more.Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade 'wareAt first of root and stem, saved both till nowFrom trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat.What? Was man made a wheelwork to wind up,And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?No!—grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:May learn a thousand things, not twice the same."This might be pagan teaching: now hear mine."I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile,Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn.I fed the babe whether it would or no:I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!I cry now, 'Urgest thou,for I am shrewdAnd smile at stories how John's word could cure—Repeat that miracle and take my faith?'I say, that miracle was duly wroughtWhen, save for it, no faith was possible.Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world,Whether the change came from our minds which seeOf shows o' the world so much as and no moreThan God wills for his purpose,—(what do ISee now, suppose you, there where you see rockRound us?)—I know not; such was the effect,So faith grew, making void more miraclesBecause too much: they would compel, not help.I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved?In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof,Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!"For I say, this is death and the sole death,When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,And lack of love from love made manifest;A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes;A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves.With ignorance was surety of a cure.When man, appalled at nature, questioned first,'What if there lurk a might behind this might?'He needed satisfaction God could give,And did give, as ye have the written word:But when he finds might still redouble might,Yet asks, 'Since all is might, what use of will?'—Will, the one source of might,—he being manWith a man's will and a man's might, to teachIn little how the two combine in large,—That man has turned round on himself and stands,Which in the course of nature is, to die."And when man questioned, 'What if there be loveBehind the will and might, as real as they?'—He needed satisfaction God could give,And did give, as ye have the written word:But when, beholding that love everywhere,He reasons, 'Since such love is everywhere,And since ourselves can love and would be loved,We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,'—How shall ye help this man who knows himself,That he must love and would be loved again,Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ,Rejecteth Christ through very need of him?The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flagsLoaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies."If he rejoin, 'But this was all the whileA trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee,Thy story of the places, names and dates,Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise,—Thy prior truth, at last discovered none,Whence now the second suffers detriment.What good of giving knowledge if, becauseO' the manner of the gift, its profit fail?And why refuse what modicum of helpHad stopped the after-doubt, impossibleI' the face of tenth—truth absolute, uniform?Why must I hit of this and miss of that,Distinguish just as I be weak or strong,And not ask of thee and have answer prompt,Was this once, was it not once?—then and nowAnd evermore, plain truth from man to man.Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's?Put question of his famous play againHow for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched,And carried in a cane and brought to earth:The fact is in the fable, cry the wise,Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact,Though fire be spirit and produced on earth.As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale:Why breed in us perplexity, mistake,Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?'"I answer, Have ye yet to argue outThe very primal thesis, plainest law,—Man is not God but hath God's end to serve,A master to obey, a course to take,Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become?Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,From vain to real, from mistake to fact,From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.How could man have progression otherwise?Before the point was mooted 'What is God?'No savage man inquired 'What am myself?'Much less replied, 'First, last, and best of things.'Man takes that title now if he believesMight can exist with neither will nor love,In God's case—what he names now Nature's Law—While in himself he recognizes loveNo less than might and will: and rightly takes.Since if man prove the sole existent thingWhere these combine, whatever their degree,However weak the might or will or love,So they be found there, put in evidence,—He is as surely higher in the scaleThan any might with neither love nor will,As life, apparent in the poorest midge,(When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing,)Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self—Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!Thus, man proves best and highest—God, in fine,And thus the victory leads but to defeat,The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall,His life becomes impossible, which is death."But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouchHe is mere man, and in humilityNeither may know God nor mistake himself;I point to the immediate consequenceAnd say, by such confession straight he fallsInto man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,Made to know that he can know and not more:Lower than God who knows all and can all,Higher than beasts which know and can so farAs each beast's limit, perfect to an end,Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;While man knows partly but conceives beside,Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,And in this striving, this converting airInto a solid he may grasp and use,Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.Such progress could no more attend his soulWere all it struggles after found at firstAnd guesses changed to knowledge absolute,Than motion wait his body, were all elseThan it the solid earth on every side,Where now through space he moves from rest to rest.Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expectHe could not, what he knows now, know at first;What he considers that he knows to-day,Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;Getting increase of knowledge, since he learnsBecause he lives, which is to be a man,Set to instruct himself by his past self:First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.God's gift was that man should conceive of truthAnd yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,As midway help till he reach fact indeed.The statuary ere he mould a shapeBoasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and nextThe aspiration to produce the same;So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout,Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see:'Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.How were it had he cried, 'I see no face,No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay'?Rather commend him that he clapped his hands,And laughed 'It is my shape and lives again!'Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth,Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeedIn what is still flesh-imitating clay.Right in you, right in him, such way be man's!God only makes the live shape at a jet.Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship?The pattern on the Mount subsists no more,Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness;But copies, Moses strove to make thereby,Serve still and are replaced as time requires:By these, make newest vessels, reach the type!If ye demur, this judgment on your head,Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law,Indulging every instinct of the soulThere where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!"Such is the burden of the latest time.I have survived to hear it with my ears,Answer it with my lips: does this suffice?For if there be a further woe than such,Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand,So long as any pulse is left in mine,May I be absent even longer yet,Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss,Though I should tarry a new hundred years!"But he was dead: 't was about noon, the daySomewhat declining: we five buried himThat eve, and then, dividing, went five ways,And I, disguised, returned to Ephesus.By this, the cave's mouth must be filled with sand.Valens is lost, I know not of his trace;The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,And could not write nor speak, but only loved:So, lest the memory of this go quite,Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts,I tell the same to Phœbas, whom believe!For many look again to find that face,Beloved John's to whom I ministered,Somewhere in life about the world; they err:Either mistaking what was darkly spokeAt ending of his book, as he relates,Or misconceiving somewhat of this speechScattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose.Believe ye will not see him any moreAbout the world with his divine regard!For all was as I say, and now the manLies as he lay once, breast to breast with God.[Cerinthus read and mused; one added this:"If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of menMere man, the first and best but nothing more,—Account him, for reward of what he was,Now and forever, wretchedest of all.For see; himself conceived of life as love,Conceived of love as what must enter in,Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved:Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for him.Well, he is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward.But by this time are many souls set free,And very many still retained alive:Nay, should his coming be delayed awhile,Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute),See if, for every finger of thy hands,There be not found, that day the world shall end,Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's wordThat he will grow incorporate with all,With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do.Call Christ, then, the illimitable God,Or lost!"But 't was Cerinthus that is lost.]
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek,And goeth fromEpsilondown toMu:Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,Covered with cloth of hair, and letteredXi,From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace:MuandEpsilonstand for my own name.I may not write it, but I make a crossTo show I wait His coming, with the rest,And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene:
It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,
Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek,
And goeth fromEpsilondown toMu:
Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,
Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,
Covered with cloth of hair, and letteredXi,
From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace:
MuandEpsilonstand for my own name.
I may not write it, but I make a cross
To show I wait His coming, with the rest,
And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]
I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,Or else the lappet of a linen robe,Into the water-vessel, lay it right,And cool his forehead just above the eyes,The while a brother, kneeling either side,Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,—He is not so far gone but he might speak."
I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,
And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,
Or else the lappet of a linen robe,
Into the water-vessel, lay it right,
And cool his forehead just above the eyes,
The while a brother, kneeling either side,
Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,—
He is not so far gone but he might speak."
This did not happen in the outer cave,Nor in the secret chamber of the rock,Where, sixty days since the decree was cut,We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,And waited for his dying all the while;But in the midmost grotto: since noon's lightReached there a little, and we would not loseThe last of what might happen on his face.
This did not happen in the outer cave,
Nor in the secret chamber of the rock,
Where, sixty days since the decree was cut,
We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,
And waited for his dying all the while;
But in the midmost grotto: since noon's light
Reached there a little, and we would not lose
The last of what might happen on his face.
I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,And brought him from the chamber in the depths,And laid him in the light where we might see:For certain smiles began about his mouth,And his lids moved, presageful of the end.
I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,
With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,
And brought him from the chamber in the depths,
And laid him in the light where we might see:
For certain smiles began about his mouth,
And his lids moved, presageful of the end.
Beyond, and halfway up the mouth o' the cave,The Bactrian convert, having his desire,Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goatThat gave us milk, on rags of various herb,Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps alive:So that if any thief or soldier passed,(Because the persecution was aware,)Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave.Outside was all noon and the burning blue.
Beyond, and halfway up the mouth o' the cave,
The Bactrian convert, having his desire,
Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goat
That gave us milk, on rags of various herb,
Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps alive:
So that if any thief or soldier passed,
(Because the persecution was aware,)
Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,
Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,
Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave.
Outside was all noon and the burning blue.
"Here is wine," answered Xanthus,—dropped a drop;I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left:But Valens had bethought him, and producedAnd broke a ball of nard, and made perfume.Only, he did—not so much wake, as—turnAnd smile a little, as a sleeper doesIf any dear one call him, touch his face—And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed.
"Here is wine," answered Xanthus,—dropped a drop;
I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,
Then chafed his right hand, and the Boy his left:
But Valens had bethought him, and produced
And broke a ball of nard, and made perfume.
Only, he did—not so much wake, as—turn
And smile a little, as a sleeper does
If any dear one call him, touch his face—
And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed.
Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.
Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:
It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,
Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.
Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran,Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought,And fetched the seventh plate of graven leadOut of the secret chamber, found a place,Pressing with finger on the deeper dints,And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming first,"I am the Resurrection and the Life."
Then the Boy sprang up from his knees, and ran,
Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought,
And fetched the seventh plate of graven lead
Out of the secret chamber, found a place,
Pressing with finger on the deeper dints,
And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming first,
"I am the Resurrection and the Life."
Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once,And sat up of himself, and looked at us;And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cryLike the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,As signal we were safe, from time to time.
Whereat he opened his eyes wide at once,
And sat up of himself, and looked at us;
And thenceforth nobody pronounced a word:
Only, outside, the Bactrian cried his cry
Like the lone desert-bird that wears the ruff,
As signal we were safe, from time to time.
First he said, "If a friend declared to me,This my son Valens, this my other son,Were James and Peter,—nay, declared as wellThis lad was very John,—I could believe!—Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe:So is myself withdrawn into my depths,The soul retreated from the perished brainWhence it was wont to feel and use the worldThrough these dull members, done with long ago.Yet I myself remain; I feel myself:And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!"
First he said, "If a friend declared to me,
This my son Valens, this my other son,
Were James and Peter,—nay, declared as well
This lad was very John,—I could believe!
—Could, for a moment, doubtlessly believe:
So is myself withdrawn into my depths,
The soul retreated from the perished brain
Whence it was wont to feel and use the world
Through these dull members, done with long ago.
Yet I myself remain; I feel myself:
And there is nothing lost. Let be, awhile!"
[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,How divers persons witness in each man,Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,A soul of each and all the bodily parts,Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,And has the use of earth, and ends the manDownward: but, tending upward for advice,Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the next soul, which, seated in the brain,Useth the first with its collected use,And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows:Which, duly tending upward in its turn,Grows into, and again is grown intoBy the last soul, that uses both the first,Subsisting whether they assist or no,And, constituting man's self, is what Is—And leans upon the former, makes it play,As that played off the first: and, tending up,Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the manUpward in that dread point of intercourse,Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.I give the glossa as Theotypas.]
[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,
A soul of each and all the bodily parts,
Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,
And has the use of earth, and ends the man
Downward: but, tending upward for advice,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the next soul, which, seated in the brain,
Useth the first with its collected use,
And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows:
Which, duly tending upward in its turn,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the last soul, that uses both the first,
Subsisting whether they assist or no,
And, constituting man's self, is what Is—
And leans upon the former, makes it play,
As that played off the first: and, tending up,
Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man
Upward in that dread point of intercourse,
Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.
What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.
I give the glossa as Theotypas.]
And then, "A stick, once fire from end to end;Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itselfA little where the fire was: thus I urgeThe soul that served me, till it task once moreWhat ashes of my brain have kept their shape,And these make effort on the last o' the flesh,Trying to taste again the truth of things"—(He smiled)—"their very superficial truth;As that ye are my sons, that it is longSince James and Peter had release by death,And I am only he, your brother John,Who saw and heard, and could remember all.Remember all! It is not much to say.What if the truth broke on me from aboveAs once and ofttimes? Such might hap again:Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass,The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen—I who now shudder only and surmise'How did your brother bear that sight and live?'
And then, "A stick, once fire from end to end;
Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!
Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself
A little where the fire was: thus I urge
The soul that served me, till it task once more
What ashes of my brain have kept their shape,
And these make effort on the last o' the flesh,
Trying to taste again the truth of things"—
(He smiled)—"their very superficial truth;
As that ye are my sons, that it is long
Since James and Peter had release by death,
And I am only he, your brother John,
Who saw and heard, and could remember all.
Remember all! It is not much to say.
What if the truth broke on me from above
As once and ofttimes? Such might hap again:
Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,
With head wool-white, eyes flame, and feet like brass,
The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen—
I who now shudder only and surmise
'How did your brother bear that sight and live?'
"If I live yet, it is for good, more loveThrough me to men: be naught but ashes hereThat keep awhile my semblance, who was John,—Still, when they scatter, there is left on earthNo one alive who knew (consider this!)—Saw with his eyes and handled with his handsThat which was from the first, the Word of Life.How will it be when none more saith 'I saw'?
"If I live yet, it is for good, more love
Through me to men: be naught but ashes here
That keep awhile my semblance, who was John,—
Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth
No one alive who knew (consider this!)
—Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first, the Word of Life.
How will it be when none more saith 'I saw'?
"Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops.Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach,I went, for many years, about the world,Saying 'It was so; so I heard and saw,'Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.Afterward came the message to myselfIn Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach,But simply listen, take a book and write,Nor set down other than the given word,With nothing left to my arbitramentTo choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,No call to write again, I found a way,And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taughtMen should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe;Or I would pen a letter to a friendAnd urge the same as friend, nor less nor more:Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.But at the last, why, I seemed left aliveLike a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I faredWhen there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;Left to repeat, 'I saw, I heard, I knew,'And go all over the old ground again,With Antichrist already in the world,And many Antichrists, who answered prompt,'Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget:Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?'I never thought to call down fire on such,Or, as in wonderful and early days,Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;But patient stated much of the Lord's lifeForgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:Since much that at the first, in deed and word,Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,Fed through such years, familiar with such light,Guarded and guided still to see and speak)Of new significance and fresh result;What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,And named them in the Gospel I have writ.For men said, 'It is getting long ago:Where is the promise of his coming?'—askedThese young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,Since I was there, and helpful in my age;And, in the main, I think such men believed.Finally, thus endeavoring, I fell sick,Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.Yet now I wake in such decrepitudeAs I had slidden down and fallen afar,Past even the presence of my former self,Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,Till I am found away from my own world,Feeling for foothold through a blank profound,Along with unborn people in strange lands,Who say—I hear said or conceive they say—'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'
"Such ever was love's way: to rise, it stoops.
Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach,
I went, for many years, about the world,
Saying 'It was so; so I heard and saw,'
Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.
Afterward came the message to myself
In Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach,
But simply listen, take a book and write,
Nor set down other than the given word,
With nothing left to my arbitrament
To choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.
Then, for my time grew brief, no message more,
No call to write again, I found a way,
And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught
Men should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe;
Or I would pen a letter to a friend
And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more:
Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.
But at the last, why, I seemed left alive
Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,
To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared
When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things;
Left to repeat, 'I saw, I heard, I knew,'
And go all over the old ground again,
With Antichrist already in the world,
And many Antichrists, who answered prompt,
'Am I not Jasper as thyself art John?
Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget:
Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?'
I never thought to call down fire on such,
Or, as in wonderful and early days,
Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb;
But patient stated much of the Lord's life
Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:
Since much that at the first, in deed and word,
Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,
Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,
Fed through such years, familiar with such light,
Guarded and guided still to see and speak)
Of new significance and fresh result;
What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,
And named them in the Gospel I have writ.
For men said, 'It is getting long ago:
Where is the promise of his coming?'—asked
These young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,
Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.
I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully,
Since I was there, and helpful in my age;
And, in the main, I think such men believed.
Finally, thus endeavoring, I fell sick,
Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,
And went to sleep with one thought that, at least,
Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,
We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.
Yet now I wake in such decrepitude
As I had slidden down and fallen afar,
Past even the presence of my former self,
Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,
Till I am found away from my own world,
Feeling for foothold through a blank profound,
Along with unborn people in strange lands,
Who say—I hear said or conceive they say—
'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?
Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'
"And how shall I assure them? Can they share—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strengthAbout each spirit, that needs must bide its time,Living and learning still as years assistWhich wear the thickness thin, and let man see—With me who hardly am withheld at all,But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,Lie bare to the universal prick of light?Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.To me, that story—ay, that Life and DeathOf which I wrote 'it was'—to me, it is;—Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else.Is not God now i' the world his power first made?Is not his love at issue still with sin,Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?Yea, and the Resurrection and UpriseTo the right hand of the throne—what is it beside,When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods my soul,And, as I saw the sin and death, even soSee I the need yet transiency of both,The good and glory consummated thence?I saw the power; I see the Love, once weak,Resume the Power: and in this word 'I see,'Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of bothThat moving o'er the spirit of man, unblindsHis eye and bids him look. These are, I see;But ye, the children, his beloved ones too,Ye need,—as I should use an optic glassI wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world,It had been given a crafty smith to make;A tube, he turned on objects brought too close,Lying confusedly insubordinateFor the unassisted eye to master once:Look through his tube, at distance now they lay,Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear!Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truthI see, reduced to plain historic fact,Diminished into clearness, proved a pointAnd far away: ye would withdraw your senseFrom out eternity, strain it upon time.Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,As though a star should open out, all sides,Grow the world on you, as it is my world.
"And how shall I assure them? Can they share
—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength
About each spirit, that needs must bide its time,
Living and learning still as years assist
Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see—
With me who hardly am withheld at all,
But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,
Lie bare to the universal prick of light?
Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,
We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.
To me, that story—ay, that Life and Death
Of which I wrote 'it was'—to me, it is;
—Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else.
Is not God now i' the world his power first made?
Is not his love at issue still with sin,
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?
Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?
Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise
To the right hand of the throne—what is it beside,
When such truth, breaking bounds, o'erfloods my soul,
And, as I saw the sin and death, even so
See I the need yet transiency of both,
The good and glory consummated thence?
I saw the power; I see the Love, once weak,
Resume the Power: and in this word 'I see,'
Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both
That moving o'er the spirit of man, unblinds
His eye and bids him look. These are, I see;
But ye, the children, his beloved ones too,
Ye need,—as I should use an optic glass
I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i' the world,
It had been given a crafty smith to make;
A tube, he turned on objects brought too close,
Lying confusedly insubordinate
For the unassisted eye to master once:
Look through his tube, at distance now they lay,
Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear!
Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth
I see, reduced to plain historic fact,
Diminished into clearness, proved a point
And far away: ye would withdraw your sense
From out eternity, strain it upon time.
Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,
Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
As though a star should open out, all sides,
Grow the world on you, as it is my world.
"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermostSuch prize despite the envy of the world,And, having gained truth, keep truth: that is all.But see the double way wherein we are led,How the soul learns diversely from the flesh!With flesh, that hath so little time to stay,And yields mere basement for the soul's emprise,Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light,And warmth was cherishing and food was choiceTo every man's flesh, thousand years ago,As now to yours and mine; the body sprangAt once to the height, and stayed: but the soul,—no!Since sages who, this noontide, meditateIn Rome or Athens, may descry some pointOf the eternal power, hid yestereve;And, as thereby the power's whole mass extends,So much extends the æther floating o'erThe love that tops the might, the Christ in God.Then, as new lessons shall be learned in theseTill earth's work stop and useless time run out,So duly, daily, needs provision beFor keeping the soul's prowess possible,Building new barriers as the old decay,Saving us from evasion of life's proof,Putting the question ever, 'Does God love,And will ye hold that truth against the world?'Ye know there needs no second proof with goodGained for our flesh from any earthly source:We might go freezing, ages,—give us fire,Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth,And guard it safe through every chance, ye know!That fable of Prometheus and his theft,How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows old(I have been used to hear the pagans own)And out of mind; but fire, howe'er its birth,Here is it, precious to the sophist nowWho laughs the myth of Æschylus to scorn,As precious to those satyrs of his play,Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing.While were it so with the soul,—this gift of truthOnce grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sureTo prosper as the body's gain is wont,—Why, man's probation would conclude, his earthCrumble; for he both reasons and decides,Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fireFor gold or purple once he knows its worth?Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain?Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift,Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact,And straightway in his life acknowledge it,As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.Sigh ye, 'It had been easier once than now'?To give you answer I am left alive;Look at me who was present from the first!Ye know what things I saw; then came a test,My first, befitting me who so had seen:'Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, himWho trod the sea and brought the dead to life?What should wring this from thee!'—ye laugh and ask.What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise,The sudden Roman faces, violent hands,And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that,And it is written, 'I forsook and fled:'There was my trial, and it ended thus.Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow:Another year or two,—what little child,What tender woman that had seen no leastOf all my sights, but barely heard them told,Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God?Well, was truth safe forever, then? Not so.Already had begun the silent workWhereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt.Teachers were busy, whispering 'All is trueAs the aged ones report: but youth can reachWhere age gropes dimly, weak with stir and strain,And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.'Thus, what the Roman's lowered spear was found,A bar to me who touched and handled truth,Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd tongue,This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates,Till imminent was the outcry 'Save our Christ!'Whereon I stated much of the Lord's lifeForgotten or misdelivered, and let it work.Such work done, as it will be, what comes next?What do I hear say, or conceive men say,'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'
"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost
Such prize despite the envy of the world,
And, having gained truth, keep truth: that is all.
But see the double way wherein we are led,
How the soul learns diversely from the flesh!
With flesh, that hath so little time to stay,
And yields mere basement for the soul's emprise,
Expect prompt teaching. Helpful was the light,
And warmth was cherishing and food was choice
To every man's flesh, thousand years ago,
As now to yours and mine; the body sprang
At once to the height, and stayed: but the soul,—no!
Since sages who, this noontide, meditate
In Rome or Athens, may descry some point
Of the eternal power, hid yestereve;
And, as thereby the power's whole mass extends,
So much extends the æther floating o'er
The love that tops the might, the Christ in God.
Then, as new lessons shall be learned in these
Till earth's work stop and useless time run out,
So duly, daily, needs provision be
For keeping the soul's prowess possible,
Building new barriers as the old decay,
Saving us from evasion of life's proof,
Putting the question ever, 'Does God love,
And will ye hold that truth against the world?'
Ye know there needs no second proof with good
Gained for our flesh from any earthly source:
We might go freezing, ages,—give us fire,
Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth,
And guard it safe through every chance, ye know!
That fable of Prometheus and his theft,
How mortals gained Jove's fiery flower, grows old
(I have been used to hear the pagans own)
And out of mind; but fire, howe'er its birth,
Here is it, precious to the sophist now
Who laughs the myth of Æschylus to scorn,
As precious to those satyrs of his play,
Who touched it in gay wonder at the thing.
While were it so with the soul,—this gift of truth
Once grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sure
To prosper as the body's gain is wont,—
Why, man's probation would conclude, his earth
Crumble; for he both reasons and decides,
Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fire
For gold or purple once he knows its worth?
Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain?
Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift,
Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact,
And straightway in his life acknowledge it,
As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire.
Sigh ye, 'It had been easier once than now'?
To give you answer I am left alive;
Look at me who was present from the first!
Ye know what things I saw; then came a test,
My first, befitting me who so had seen:
'Forsake the Christ thou sawest transfigured, him
Who trod the sea and brought the dead to life?
What should wring this from thee!'—ye laugh and ask.
What wrung it? Even a torchlight and a noise,
The sudden Roman faces, violent hands,
And fear of what the Jews might do! Just that,
And it is written, 'I forsook and fled:'
There was my trial, and it ended thus.
Ay, but my soul had gained its truth, could grow:
Another year or two,—what little child,
What tender woman that had seen no least
Of all my sights, but barely heard them told,
Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,
Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God?
Well, was truth safe forever, then? Not so.
Already had begun the silent work
Whereby truth, deadened of its absolute blaze,
Might need love's eye to pierce the o'erstretched doubt.
Teachers were busy, whispering 'All is true
As the aged ones report: but youth can reach
Where age gropes dimly, weak with stir and strain,
And the full doctrine slumbers till to-day.'
Thus, what the Roman's lowered spear was found,
A bar to me who touched and handled truth,
Now proved the glozing of some new shrewd tongue,
This Ebion, this Cerinthus or their mates,
Till imminent was the outcry 'Save our Christ!'
Whereon I stated much of the Lord's life
Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work.
Such work done, as it will be, what comes next?
What do I hear say, or conceive men say,
'Was John at all, and did he say he saw?
Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!'
"Is this indeed a burden for late days,And may I help to bear it with you all,Using my weakness which becomes your strength?For if a babe were born inside this grot,Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun,Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light's place,—One loving him and wishful he should learn,Would much rejoice himself was blinded firstMonth by month here, so made to understandHow eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss:I think I could explain to such a childThere was more glow outside than gleams he caught,Ay, nor need urge 'I saw it, so believe!'It is a heavy burden you shall bearIn latter days, new lands, or old grown strange,Left without me, which must be very soon.What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it!I see you stand conversing, each new face,Either in fields, of yellow summer eves,On islets yet unnamed amid the sea;Or pace for shelter 'neath a porticoOut of the crowd in some enormous townWhere now the larks sing in a solitude;Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sandIdly conjectured to be Ephesus:And no one asks his fellow any more'Where is the promise of his coming?' but'Was he revealed in any of his lives,As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?'
"Is this indeed a burden for late days,
And may I help to bear it with you all,
Using my weakness which becomes your strength?
For if a babe were born inside this grot,
Grew to a boy here, heard us praise the sun,
Yet had but yon sole glimmer in light's place,—
One loving him and wishful he should learn,
Would much rejoice himself was blinded first
Month by month here, so made to understand
How eyes, born darkling, apprehend amiss:
I think I could explain to such a child
There was more glow outside than gleams he caught,
Ay, nor need urge 'I saw it, so believe!'
It is a heavy burden you shall bear
In latter days, new lands, or old grown strange,
Left without me, which must be very soon.
What is the doubt, my brothers? Quick with it!
I see you stand conversing, each new face,
Either in fields, of yellow summer eves,
On islets yet unnamed amid the sea;
Or pace for shelter 'neath a portico
Out of the crowd in some enormous town
Where now the larks sing in a solitude;
Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sand
Idly conjectured to be Ephesus:
And no one asks his fellow any more
'Where is the promise of his coming?' but
'Was he revealed in any of his lives,
As Power, as Love, as Influencing Soul?'
"Quick, for time presses, tell the whole mind out,And let us ask and answer and be saved!My book speaks on, because it cannot pass;One listens quietly, nor scoffs but pleads,'Here is a tale of things done ages since;What truth was ever told the second day?Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for naught.Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love,And what we love most, power and love in one,Let us acknowledge on the record here,Accepting these in Christ: must Christ then be?Has he been? Did not we ourselves make him?Our mind receives but what it holds, no more.First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ—A proof we comprehend his love, a proofWe had such love already in ourselves,Knew first what else we should not recognize.'T is mere projection from man's inmost mind,And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back,Becomes accounted somewhat out of him;He throws it up in air, it drops down earth's,With shape, name, story added, man's old way.How prove you Christ came otherwise at least?Next try the power: he made and rules the world:Certes there is a world once made, now ruled,Unless things have been ever as we see.Our sires declared a charioteer's yoked steedsBrought the sun up the east and down the west,Which only of itself now rises, sets,As if a hand impelled it and a will,—Thus they long thought, they who had will and hands:But the new question's whisper is distinct,Wherefore must all force needs be like ourselves?We have the hands, the will; what made and drivesThe sun is force, is law, is named, not known,While will and love we do know; marks of these,Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare—As that, to punish or reward our race,The sun at undue times arose or setOr else stood still: what do not men affirm?But earth requires as urgently rewardOr punishment to-day as years ago,And none expects the sun will interpose:Therefore it was mere passion and mistake,Or erring zeal for right, which changed the truth.Go back, far, farther, to the birth of things;Ever the will, the intelligence, the love,Man's!—which he gives, supposing he but finds,As late he gave head, body, hands and feet,To help these in what forms he called his gods.First, Jove's brow, Juno's eyes were swept away,But Jove's wrath, Juno's pride continued long:As last, will, power, and love discarded these,So law in turn discards power, love, and will.What proveth God is otherwise at least?All else, projection from the mind of man!
"Quick, for time presses, tell the whole mind out,
And let us ask and answer and be saved!
My book speaks on, because it cannot pass;
One listens quietly, nor scoffs but pleads,
'Here is a tale of things done ages since;
What truth was ever told the second day?
Wonders, that would prove doctrine, go for naught.
Remains the doctrine, love; well, we must love,
And what we love most, power and love in one,
Let us acknowledge on the record here,
Accepting these in Christ: must Christ then be?
Has he been? Did not we ourselves make him?
Our mind receives but what it holds, no more.
First of the love, then; we acknowledge Christ—
A proof we comprehend his love, a proof
We had such love already in ourselves,
Knew first what else we should not recognize.
'T is mere projection from man's inmost mind,
And, what he loves, thus falls reflected back,
Becomes accounted somewhat out of him;
He throws it up in air, it drops down earth's,
With shape, name, story added, man's old way.
How prove you Christ came otherwise at least?
Next try the power: he made and rules the world:
Certes there is a world once made, now ruled,
Unless things have been ever as we see.
Our sires declared a charioteer's yoked steeds
Brought the sun up the east and down the west,
Which only of itself now rises, sets,
As if a hand impelled it and a will,—
Thus they long thought, they who had will and hands:
But the new question's whisper is distinct,
Wherefore must all force needs be like ourselves?
We have the hands, the will; what made and drives
The sun is force, is law, is named, not known,
While will and love we do know; marks of these,
Eye-witnesses attest, so books declare—
As that, to punish or reward our race,
The sun at undue times arose or set
Or else stood still: what do not men affirm?
But earth requires as urgently reward
Or punishment to-day as years ago,
And none expects the sun will interpose:
Therefore it was mere passion and mistake,
Or erring zeal for right, which changed the truth.
Go back, far, farther, to the birth of things;
Ever the will, the intelligence, the love,
Man's!—which he gives, supposing he but finds,
As late he gave head, body, hands and feet,
To help these in what forms he called his gods.
First, Jove's brow, Juno's eyes were swept away,
But Jove's wrath, Juno's pride continued long:
As last, will, power, and love discarded these,
So law in turn discards power, love, and will.
What proveth God is otherwise at least?
All else, projection from the mind of man!
"Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong,But place my gospel where I put my hands.
"Nay, do not give me wine, for I am strong,
But place my gospel where I put my hands.
"I say that man was made to grow, not stop;That help, he needed once, and needs no more,Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn:For he hath new needs, and new helps to these.This imports solely, man should mount on eachNew height in view; the help whereby he mounts,The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.Man apprehends him newly at each stageWhereat earth's ladder drops, its service done;And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigsTo show inside lie germs of herbs unborn,And check the careless step would spoil their birth;But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go,Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds,It is no longer for old twigs ye look,Which proved once underneath lay store of seed,But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast,For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain,Nor miracles need prove it any more.Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade 'wareAt first of root and stem, saved both till nowFrom trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat.What? Was man made a wheelwork to wind up,And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?No!—grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
"I say that man was made to grow, not stop;
That help, he needed once, and needs no more,
Having grown but an inch by, is withdrawn:
For he hath new needs, and new helps to these.
This imports solely, man should mount on each
New height in view; the help whereby he mounts,
The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall,
Since all things suffer change save God the Truth.
Man apprehends him newly at each stage
Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done;
And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved.
You stick a garden-plot with ordered twigs
To show inside lie germs of herbs unborn,
And check the careless step would spoil their birth;
But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go,
Since should ye doubt of virtues, question kinds,
It is no longer for old twigs ye look,
Which proved once underneath lay store of seed,
But to the herb's self, by what light ye boast,
For what fruit's signs are. This book's fruit is plain,
Nor miracles need prove it any more.
Doth the fruit show? Then miracles bade 'ware
At first of root and stem, saved both till now
From trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat.
What? Was man made a wheelwork to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No!—grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
"This might be pagan teaching: now hear mine.
"This might be pagan teaching: now hear mine.
"I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile,Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn.I fed the babe whether it would or no:I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!I cry now, 'Urgest thou,for I am shrewdAnd smile at stories how John's word could cure—Repeat that miracle and take my faith?'I say, that miracle was duly wroughtWhen, save for it, no faith was possible.Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world,Whether the change came from our minds which seeOf shows o' the world so much as and no moreThan God wills for his purpose,—(what do ISee now, suppose you, there where you see rockRound us?)—I know not; such was the effect,So faith grew, making void more miraclesBecause too much: they would compel, not help.I say, the acknowledgment of God in ChristAccepted by thy reason, solves for theeAll questions in the earth and out of it,And has so far advanced thee to be wise.Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved?In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof,Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!
"I say, that as the babe, you feed awhile,
Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself,
So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth:
When they can eat, babe's nurture is withdrawn.
I fed the babe whether it would or no:
I bid the boy or feed himself or starve.
I cried once, 'That ye may believe in Christ,
Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!
I cry now, 'Urgest thou,for I am shrewd
And smile at stories how John's word could cure—
Repeat that miracle and take my faith?'
I say, that miracle was duly wrought
When, save for it, no faith was possible.
Whether a change were wrought i' the shows o' the world,
Whether the change came from our minds which see
Of shows o' the world so much as and no more
Than God wills for his purpose,—(what do I
See now, suppose you, there where you see rock
Round us?)—I know not; such was the effect,
So faith grew, making void more miracles
Because too much: they would compel, not help.
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it,
And has so far advanced thee to be wise.
Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved?
In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof,
Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung?
Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!
"For I say, this is death and the sole death,When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,And lack of love from love made manifest;A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes;A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves.With ignorance was surety of a cure.When man, appalled at nature, questioned first,'What if there lurk a might behind this might?'He needed satisfaction God could give,And did give, as ye have the written word:But when he finds might still redouble might,Yet asks, 'Since all is might, what use of will?'—Will, the one source of might,—he being manWith a man's will and a man's might, to teachIn little how the two combine in large,—That man has turned round on himself and stands,Which in the course of nature is, to die.
"For I say, this is death and the sole death,
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest;
A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes;
A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves.
With ignorance was surety of a cure.
When man, appalled at nature, questioned first,
'What if there lurk a might behind this might?'
He needed satisfaction God could give,
And did give, as ye have the written word:
But when he finds might still redouble might,
Yet asks, 'Since all is might, what use of will?'
—Will, the one source of might,—he being man
With a man's will and a man's might, to teach
In little how the two combine in large,—
That man has turned round on himself and stands,
Which in the course of nature is, to die.
"And when man questioned, 'What if there be loveBehind the will and might, as real as they?'—He needed satisfaction God could give,And did give, as ye have the written word:But when, beholding that love everywhere,He reasons, 'Since such love is everywhere,And since ourselves can love and would be loved,We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,'—How shall ye help this man who knows himself,That he must love and would be loved again,Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ,Rejecteth Christ through very need of him?The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flagsLoaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies.
"And when man questioned, 'What if there be love
Behind the will and might, as real as they?'—
He needed satisfaction God could give,
And did give, as ye have the written word:
But when, beholding that love everywhere,
He reasons, 'Since such love is everywhere,
And since ourselves can love and would be loved,
We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,'—
How shall ye help this man who knows himself,
That he must love and would be loved again,
Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ,
Rejecteth Christ through very need of him?
The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags
Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies.
"If he rejoin, 'But this was all the whileA trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee,Thy story of the places, names and dates,Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise,—Thy prior truth, at last discovered none,Whence now the second suffers detriment.What good of giving knowledge if, becauseO' the manner of the gift, its profit fail?And why refuse what modicum of helpHad stopped the after-doubt, impossibleI' the face of tenth—truth absolute, uniform?Why must I hit of this and miss of that,Distinguish just as I be weak or strong,And not ask of thee and have answer prompt,Was this once, was it not once?—then and nowAnd evermore, plain truth from man to man.Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's?Put question of his famous play againHow for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched,And carried in a cane and brought to earth:The fact is in the fable, cry the wise,Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact,Though fire be spirit and produced on earth.As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale:Why breed in us perplexity, mistake,Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?'
"If he rejoin, 'But this was all the while
A trick; the fault was, first of all, in thee,
Thy story of the places, names and dates,
Where, when and how the ultimate truth had rise,
—Thy prior truth, at last discovered none,
Whence now the second suffers detriment.
What good of giving knowledge if, because
O' the manner of the gift, its profit fail?
And why refuse what modicum of help
Had stopped the after-doubt, impossible
I' the face of tenth—truth absolute, uniform?
Why must I hit of this and miss of that,
Distinguish just as I be weak or strong,
And not ask of thee and have answer prompt,
Was this once, was it not once?—then and now
And evermore, plain truth from man to man.
Is John's procedure just the heathen bard's?
Put question of his famous play again
How for the ephemerals' sake, Jove's fire was filched,
And carried in a cane and brought to earth:
The fact is in the fable, cry the wise,
Mortals obtained the boon, so much is fact,
Though fire be spirit and produced on earth.
As with the Titan's, so now with thy tale:
Why breed in us perplexity, mistake,
Nor tell the whole truth in the proper words?'
"I answer, Have ye yet to argue outThe very primal thesis, plainest law,—Man is not God but hath God's end to serve,A master to obey, a course to take,Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become?Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,From vain to real, from mistake to fact,From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.How could man have progression otherwise?Before the point was mooted 'What is God?'No savage man inquired 'What am myself?'Much less replied, 'First, last, and best of things.'Man takes that title now if he believesMight can exist with neither will nor love,In God's case—what he names now Nature's Law—While in himself he recognizes loveNo less than might and will: and rightly takes.Since if man prove the sole existent thingWhere these combine, whatever their degree,However weak the might or will or love,So they be found there, put in evidence,—He is as surely higher in the scaleThan any might with neither love nor will,As life, apparent in the poorest midge,(When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing,)Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self—Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!Thus, man proves best and highest—God, in fine,And thus the victory leads but to defeat,The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall,His life becomes impossible, which is death.
"I answer, Have ye yet to argue out
The very primal thesis, plainest law,
—Man is not God but hath God's end to serve,
A master to obey, a course to take,
Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become?
Grant this, then man must pass from old to new,
From vain to real, from mistake to fact,
From what once seemed good, to what now proves best.
How could man have progression otherwise?
Before the point was mooted 'What is God?'
No savage man inquired 'What am myself?'
Much less replied, 'First, last, and best of things.'
Man takes that title now if he believes
Might can exist with neither will nor love,
In God's case—what he names now Nature's Law—
While in himself he recognizes love
No less than might and will: and rightly takes.
Since if man prove the sole existent thing
Where these combine, whatever their degree,
However weak the might or will or love,
So they be found there, put in evidence,—
He is as surely higher in the scale
Than any might with neither love nor will,
As life, apparent in the poorest midge,
(When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing,)
Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self—
Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!
Thus, man proves best and highest—God, in fine,
And thus the victory leads but to defeat,
The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall,
His life becomes impossible, which is death.
"But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouchHe is mere man, and in humilityNeither may know God nor mistake himself;I point to the immediate consequenceAnd say, by such confession straight he fallsInto man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,Made to know that he can know and not more:Lower than God who knows all and can all,Higher than beasts which know and can so farAs each beast's limit, perfect to an end,Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;While man knows partly but conceives beside,Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,And in this striving, this converting airInto a solid he may grasp and use,Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.Such progress could no more attend his soulWere all it struggles after found at firstAnd guesses changed to knowledge absolute,Than motion wait his body, were all elseThan it the solid earth on every side,Where now through space he moves from rest to rest.Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expectHe could not, what he knows now, know at first;What he considers that he knows to-day,Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;Getting increase of knowledge, since he learnsBecause he lives, which is to be a man,Set to instruct himself by his past self:First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.God's gift was that man should conceive of truthAnd yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,As midway help till he reach fact indeed.The statuary ere he mould a shapeBoasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and nextThe aspiration to produce the same;So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout,Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see:'Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.How were it had he cried, 'I see no face,No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay'?Rather commend him that he clapped his hands,And laughed 'It is my shape and lives again!'Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth,Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeedIn what is still flesh-imitating clay.Right in you, right in him, such way be man's!God only makes the live shape at a jet.Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship?The pattern on the Mount subsists no more,Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness;But copies, Moses strove to make thereby,Serve still and are replaced as time requires:By these, make newest vessels, reach the type!If ye demur, this judgment on your head,Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law,Indulging every instinct of the soulThere where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!"Such is the burden of the latest time.I have survived to hear it with my ears,Answer it with my lips: does this suffice?For if there be a further woe than such,Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand,So long as any pulse is left in mine,May I be absent even longer yet,Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss,Though I should tarry a new hundred years!"
"But if, appealing thence, he cower, avouch
He is mere man, and in humility
Neither may know God nor mistake himself;
I point to the immediate consequence
And say, by such confession straight he falls
Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,
Made to know that he can know and not more:
Lower than God who knows all and can all,
Higher than beasts which know and can so far
As each beast's limit, perfect to an end,
Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;
While man knows partly but conceives beside,
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,
And in this striving, this converting air
Into a solid he may grasp and use,
Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are,
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
Such progress could no more attend his soul
Were all it struggles after found at first
And guesses changed to knowledge absolute,
Than motion wait his body, were all else
Than it the solid earth on every side,
Where now through space he moves from rest to rest.
Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect
He could not, what he knows now, know at first;
What he considers that he knows to-day,
Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown;
Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
Because he lives, which is to be a man,
Set to instruct himself by his past self:
First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,
Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,
Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.
God's gift was that man should conceive of truth
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
As midway help till he reach fact indeed.
The statuary ere he mould a shape
Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next
The aspiration to produce the same;
So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout,
Cries ever 'Now I have the thing I see:'
Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,
From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.
How were it had he cried, 'I see no face,
No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay'?
Rather commend him that he clapped his hands,
And laughed 'It is my shape and lives again!'
Enjoyed the falsehood, touched it on to truth,
Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeed
In what is still flesh-imitating clay.
Right in you, right in him, such way be man's!
God only makes the live shape at a jet.
Will ye renounce this pact of creatureship?
The pattern on the Mount subsists no more,
Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness;
But copies, Moses strove to make thereby,
Serve still and are replaced as time requires:
By these, make newest vessels, reach the type!
If ye demur, this judgment on your head,
Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!
"Such is the burden of the latest time.
I have survived to hear it with my ears,
Answer it with my lips: does this suffice?
For if there be a further woe than such,
Wherein my brothers struggling need a hand,
So long as any pulse is left in mine,
May I be absent even longer yet,
Plucking the blind ones back from the abyss,
Though I should tarry a new hundred years!"
But he was dead: 't was about noon, the daySomewhat declining: we five buried himThat eve, and then, dividing, went five ways,And I, disguised, returned to Ephesus.
But he was dead: 't was about noon, the day
Somewhat declining: we five buried him
That eve, and then, dividing, went five ways,
And I, disguised, returned to Ephesus.
By this, the cave's mouth must be filled with sand.Valens is lost, I know not of his trace;The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,And could not write nor speak, but only loved:So, lest the memory of this go quite,Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts,I tell the same to Phœbas, whom believe!For many look again to find that face,Beloved John's to whom I ministered,Somewhere in life about the world; they err:Either mistaking what was darkly spokeAt ending of his book, as he relates,Or misconceiving somewhat of this speechScattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose.Believe ye will not see him any moreAbout the world with his divine regard!For all was as I say, and now the manLies as he lay once, breast to breast with God.
By this, the cave's mouth must be filled with sand.
Valens is lost, I know not of his trace;
The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,
And could not write nor speak, but only loved:
So, lest the memory of this go quite,
Seeing that I to-morrow fight the beasts,
I tell the same to Phœbas, whom believe!
For many look again to find that face,
Beloved John's to whom I ministered,
Somewhere in life about the world; they err:
Either mistaking what was darkly spoke
At ending of his book, as he relates,
Or misconceiving somewhat of this speech
Scattered from mouth to mouth, as I suppose.
Believe ye will not see him any more
About the world with his divine regard!
For all was as I say, and now the man
Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God.
[Cerinthus read and mused; one added this:
[Cerinthus read and mused; one added this:
"If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of menMere man, the first and best but nothing more,—Account him, for reward of what he was,Now and forever, wretchedest of all.For see; himself conceived of life as love,Conceived of love as what must enter in,Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved:Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for him.Well, he is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward.But by this time are many souls set free,And very many still retained alive:Nay, should his coming be delayed awhile,Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute),See if, for every finger of thy hands,There be not found, that day the world shall end,Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's wordThat he will grow incorporate with all,With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do.Call Christ, then, the illimitable God,Or lost!"
"If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men
Mere man, the first and best but nothing more,—
Account him, for reward of what he was,
Now and forever, wretchedest of all.
For see; himself conceived of life as love,
Conceived of love as what must enter in,
Fill up, make one with his each soul he loved:
Thus much for man's joy, all men's joy for him.
Well, he is gone, thou sayest, to fit reward.
But by this time are many souls set free,
And very many still retained alive:
Nay, should his coming be delayed awhile,
Say, ten years longer (twelve years, some compute),
See if, for every finger of thy hands,
There be not found, that day the world shall end,
Hundreds of souls, each holding by Christ's word
That he will grow incorporate with all,
With me as Pamphylax, with him as John,
Groom for each bride! Can a mere man do this?
Yet Christ saith, this he lived and died to do.
Call Christ, then, the illimitable God,
Or lost!"
But 't was Cerinthus that is lost.]
But 't was Cerinthus that is lost.]