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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  116. From ‘Festus’

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Philip James Bailey (1816–1902)

116. From ‘Festus’

I

‘GOD is the sole and self-subsistent one;

From Him, the sun-creator, nature was

Aethereal essences, all elements,

The souls therein indigenous, and man

Symbolic of all being. Out of earth

The matron moon was moulded, and the sea

Filled up the shining chasm; both now fulfil

One orbit and one nature, and all orbs

With them one fate, one universal end.

From light’s projective moment, in the earth

The moon was, even as earth i’ the sun; the sun

A fiery incarnation of the heavens.

When sun, earth, moon again make one, resumes

Nature her heavenly state; is glorified.’

As, to the sleepless eye, form forth, at last,

The long immeasurable layers of light,

And beams of fire enormous in the east,

The broad foundations of the heaven-domed day

All fineless as the future, so uprose

On mine the great celestial certainty.

The mask of matter fell off, I beheld,

Void of all seeming, the sole substance mind,

The actualized ideal of the world.

An absolutest essence filled my soul;

And superseding all its modes and powers,

Gave to the spirit a consciousness divine;

A sense of vast existence in the skies;

Boundless commune with spiritual light, and proof

Self-shown, of heaven commensurate with all life.

And I to the light of the great spirit’s eyes

Mine hungry eyes returned which, past the first

Intensifying blindness, clearlier saw

The words she uttered of triumphant truth.

For truly, and as my vision heightened, lo!

The universal volume of the heavens,

Star-lettered in celestial characters,

Moved musically into words her breath framed forth,

And varied momently; and I perceived

That thus she spake of God: I silent still

And hearkening to the sea-swell of her voice:

‘From one divine, all permanent unity comes

The many and infinite; from God all just

To himself and others, who to all is love,

Earth and the moon, like syllables of light,

Uttered by him, were with all creatures blessed

By him, and with a sevenfold blessing sealed

To perfect rest, celestial order; all

The double-tabled book of heaven and earth,

Despite such due deficiency as cleaves

Inevitably to soul, till God resume,

Progressive aye, possessing too all bliss

Elect and universal in the heavens.’

II

And none can truly worship but who have

The earnest of their glory from on high,

God’s nature in them. It is the love of God,

The ecstatic sense of oneness with all things,

And special worship towards himself that thrills,

Through life’s self-conscious chord, vibrant in him,

Harmonious with the universe, which makes

Our sole fit claim to being immortal; that

Wanting nor willing, the world cannot worship.

And whether the lip speak, or in inspired

Silence, we clasp our hearts as a shut book

Of song unsung, the silence and the speech

Is each his; and as coming from and going

To him, is worthy of him and his love.

Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to truth;

The expiration of the thing inspired.

Above the battling rock-storm of this world

Lies heaven’s great calm, through which as through a bell,

Tolleth the tongue of God eternally,

Calling to worship. Whose hears that tongue

Worships. The spirit enters with the sound,

Preaching the one and universal word,

The God-word, which is spirit, life, and light;

The written word to one race, the unwrit

Revealment to the thousand-peopled world.

The ear which hears is pre-attuned in heaven,

The eye which sees prevision hath ere birth.

But the just future shall to many give

Gifts which the partial present doles to few;

To all the glory of obeying God.