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I MY own dim life should teach me this, | |
| That life shall live for evermore, | |
| Else earth is darkness at the core, | |
| And dust and ashes all that is; | |
| |
| This round of green, this orb of flame, | 5 |
| Fantastic beauty; such as lurks | |
| In some wild Poet, when he works | |
| Without a conscience or an aim. | |
| |
| What then were God to such as I? | |
| ’Twere hardly worth my while to choose | 10 |
| Of things all mortal, or to use | |
| A little patience ere I die; | |
| |
| ’Twere best at once to sink to peace | |
| Like birds the charming serpent draws, | |
| To drop head-foremost in the jaws | 15 |
| Of vacant darkness and to cease. | |
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II Yet if some voice that man could trust | |
| Should murmur from the narrow house, | |
| “The cheeks drop in; the body bows; | |
| Man dies: nor is there hope in dust:” | 20 |
| |
| Might I not say? “Yet even here, | |
| But for one hour, O Love, I strive | |
| To keep so sweet a thing alive:” | |
| But I shall turn mine ears and hear | |
| |
| The moanings of the homeless sea, | 25 |
| The sound of streams that swift or slow | |
| Draw down Æonian hills, and sow | |
| The dust of continents to be; | |
| |
| And Love would answer with a sigh, | |
| “The sound of that forgetful shore | 30 |
| Will change my sweetness more and more, | |
| Half-dead to know that I shall die.” | |
| |
| O me, what profits it to put | |
| An idle case? If Death were seen | |
| At first as Death, Love had not been | 35 |
| Or been in narrowest working shut, | |
| |
| Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, | |
| Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape | |
| Had bruised the herb and crush’d the grape, | |
| And bask’d and batten’d in the woods. | 40 |
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III Oh yet we trust that somehow good | |
| Will be the final goal of ill | |
| To pangs of nature, sins of will, | |
| Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; | |
| |
| That nothing walks with aimless feet; | 45 |
| That not one life shall be destroyed, | |
| Or cast as rubbish to the void, | |
| When God hath made the pile complete; | |
| |
| That not a worm is cloven in vain; | |
| That not a moth with vain desire | 50 |
| Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire, | |
| Or but subserves another’s gain. | |
| |
| Behold, we know not anything; | |
| I can but trust that good shall fall | |
| At last—far off—at last, to all, | 55 |
| And every winter change to spring. | |
| |
| So runs my dream: but what am I? | |
| An infant crying in the night: | |
| An infant crying for the light: | |
| And with no language but a cry. | 60 |
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IV The wish that of the living whole | |
| No life may fail beyond the grave, | |
| Derives it not from what we have | |
| The likest God within the soul? | |
| |
| Are God and Nature then at strife, | 65 |
| That Nature lends such evil dreams? | |
| So careful of the type she seems | |
| So careless of the single life; | |
| |
| That I, considering everywhere | |
| Her secret meaning in her deeds, | 70 |
| And finding that of fifty seeds | |
| She often brings but one to bear, | |
| |
| I falter where I firmly trod, | |
| And falling with my weight of cares | |
| Upon the great world’s altar-stairs | 75 |
| That slope thro’ darkness up to God, | |
| |
| I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, | |
| And gather dust and chaff, and call | |
| To what I feel is Lord of all, | |
| And faintly trust the larger hope. | 80 |
| |
V “So careful of the type”? but no | |
| From scarped cliff and quarried stone | |
| She cries, “A thousand types are gone: | |
| I care for nothing, all shall go. | |
| |
| “Thou makest thine appeal to me: | 85 |
| I bring to life, I bring to death: | |
| The spirit does but mean the breath: | |
| I know no more.” And he, shall he, | |
| |
| Man, her last work, who seem’d so fair, | |
| Such splendid purpose in his eyes, | 90 |
| Who roll’d the psalm to wintry skies, | |
| Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, | |
| |
| Who trusted God was love indeed | |
| And love Creation’s final law— | |
| Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw | 95 |
| With ravine, shriek’d against his creed— | |
| |
| Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills, | |
| Who battled for the True, the Just, | |
| Be blown about the desert dust, | |
| Or seal’d within the iron hills? | 100 |
| |
| No more? A monster then, a dream, | |
| A discord. Dragons of the prime, | |
| That tare each other in their slime, | |
| Were mellow music match’d with him. | |
| |
| O life as futile, then, as frail! | 105 |
| O for thy voice to soothe and bless! | |
| What hope of answer, or redress? | |
| Behind the veil, behind the veil. | |
| |
VI That which we dare invoke to bless; | |
| Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt; | 110 |
| He, They, One, All; within, without; | |
| The Power in darkness, whom we guess; | |
| |
| I found Him not in world or sun, | |
| Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye; | |
| Nor thro’ the questions men may try, | 115 |
| The petty cobwebs we have spun: | |
| |
| If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep, | |
| I heard a voice, “believe no more,” | |
| And heard an ever-breaking shore | |
| That tumbled in the godless deep; | 120 |
| |
| A warmth within the breast would melt, | |
| The freezing reason’s colder part, | |
| And like a man in wrath the heart | |
| Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.” | |
| |
| No, like a child in doubt and fear: | 125 |
| But that blind clamour made me wise; | |
| Then was I as a child that cries, | |
| But, crying, knows his father near; | |
| |
| And what I am beheld again | |
| What is, and no man understands; | 130 |
| And out of darkness came the hands | |
| That reach thro’ nature, moulding men. | |
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