Part 3

What of ourselves, who looking on the world Condemn its faithlessness? How weak indeed Must be our own faith if our hope for man Fails because here the march is retrograde And there the goal is hidden. We have mourned Beauty deflowered, and paths of old romance Trodden to dust; but we remembered not The waste reclaimed, the pestilential swamp Drained of its poison. While in vain we sought The faith that led the old world’s pioneers Through desert places, we forget that Hell Of superstition, bigotry, and fear That tortured countless souls, that bondage vile From which the world has freed itself at last. Foul things that never shall be seen again Have been uprooted; but the beautiful, The old and lovely things that now are not,-- These are not dead, but in our dreams they hide, Till love shall charm them back into the world.

’Tis man’s to build; our dream shows God’s design: The misinterpretation of our dream, Our faithlessness, is written in the world; But still the dream remains;--’tis born again With every child that comes from the unknown Into our mortal life. ’Twas not for us To look for the fulfilment of our dream, Or find our heart’s desire upon the earth: But it is ours to labour; ay, ’tis ours Into our labour to translate our dreams.

Come! for our labour calls us to the world,-- The world that bows before the Belly-god To whom men sacrifice their dreams divine For meats that perish. Are they satisfied? Are they not crying, Give us back our dreams? Come! ’tis for those who have not sold their dreams To stand together and to lead the world.

HEARTH LIGHT

There was a home we used to know Far, far away,--long, long ago; So far away, it often seems A land of ghosts, a world of dreams; And yet so near, a wind that stirs A twilight whisper in the firs, A little river’s wandering tune, A silver sea-way in the moon, A flower’s scent is all we need Thither to call us, thither lead. Then we are shown each kind old face And every half-forgotten place Unchanged: we see the raindrops still Undried upon the daffodil On April mornings, still behold Long-garnered harvests waving gold On blue horizons, hear again The winter sound of wind and rain That filled the land on evenings drear, And gave our hearth a homelier cheer,-- That hearth whose light has since out-flowed On every dark and wintry road,-- Whose memory has come to raise A shelter round our homeless days, And brought us on our unknown quest Promise of haven, dreams of rest.

THE TEST OF FAITH

We had no need of faith in those young days When we went forth on the world’s unknown ways, When joy from every fount of life welled out, And beauty over-ran its crystal springs. We could not ask if life were good or ill When all our dreams it promised to fulfil, We could not fear the unknown road, nor doubt That love divine was at the heart of things.

All is the same, all but ourselves, and we! Do our eyes fail or but too clearly see? For we remember how our hearts leapt up With each new day that dawned upon the earth. Was it then but a vision we beheld, And but our youthful spirits that out-welled, That now the fountain is an unfilled cup, And where we looked for harvest there is dearth?

We know not when our faith began to wane, Or whether ’twas the sight of wrong and pain, The knowledge of a world wherein the strong Preyed on the weak, that wakened our distrust; Whether it was the torture that we saw, Dealt in obedience to Nature’s law, That made us ask if such a world of wrong From dust evolved should not return to dust.

Was God, we asked, the shaper of that plan Of brutal strife from which the soul of man Emerged? could man, a creature born of earth, Find beyond earth a place to house his soul? Or was it all a pattern chance had traced, A pattern that would be again erased; Were strife, and wrong, and love, and death, and birth, But motions of a force without a goal?

Give us, we cry, a pilgrimage of pain, However long, so it be not in vain! Show us a task, however desperate, So that our labour be not all for nought! We would not mourn a lot, however hard, If we were sure we had a trust to guard; We could fight on, careless of our own fate, If we were sure that not in vain we fought.

But we have looked upon the ants and bees, And asked ourselves if we be more than these, Who haply find their sunlit hours sweet, And for their common weal their lives lay down. We! we who claim to be the Lord’s elect; We! we the vile, the outcast, and the wrecked; We! the gay rabble of a Paris street; We! the low millions of a Chinese town.

Then, in disdain of all the shame and strife, We wish no more to be a part of life. The vital force that we miscalled a soul Ebbs, and our feet grow weary; we would rest. Since toil and sacrifice can but avail To nurse a hope that in the end must fail, Better, we cry, the graveyard for a goal Than any further hopeless, aimless quest.

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Now is the test of faith: there was no room For faith when life put forth its vernal bloom, And brave adventures promised to fulfil Our dreams, and danger made us long to prove Our fighting strength; but now that we have spent Our treasure and beheld our punishment, Oh! now, when we already feel the chill Of death, and hear the passing bell of love,

Now while the laws no deeds nor prayers can move Bear witness against all we long to prove, Now is the test of faith:--still to be true To those great purposes our dreams have shown; And, as a son defends a mother’s name Although a thousand voices cry her shame, Because he knows the heart they never knew, Still, still to trust the life whence springs our own.

We have beheld the evil and the good, And know, ourselves, the strength of wrong withstood. May it not be that God is everywhere Striving Himself against eternal wrong? May it not be that on that battle-field He needs the help of those His love would shield? May not His arm be bound by our despair? May not our courage help to make it strong?

Come! ere strength fail us, be it ours to guard That good which now can be upheld or marred,-- Tending, it may be, in our earth-born dust, The mortal seed of some immortal bloom. Come! can we dare to pause or hesitate When we may be the conquerors of fate,-- When fighting on God’s side for life’s great trust Our victory may break the bonds of doom?

And if no hope appears, yet having seen Dreams of what should be and what might have been,-- If as a crippled battle-ship that sinks, Flying her fighting colours to the fleet, We face the end,--is there no fountain-head Of strength divine from which such strength is fed? Must not our lives be bound with unseen links To some great heart that cannot know defeat.

CHILDREN’S FAITH

Great teachers had we in our youth, Great lessons learned we unaware. Faith, sure enough to laugh at Truth, If Truth had not been also fair, Was ours: we clasped the very hand That shaped the worlds, and read complete The secret of the Love that planned, In flowers that grew about our feet.

Our instincts made immortal claims; Our spirits touched the infinite; We breathed the breath of spacious aims, But lowly things were our delight. No load had seemed too great to bear But in our kinship with the sod, Our weakness gave us hearts to share The vast humanity of God.

A RUINED CHAPEL

A few stones piled together long ago, And fallen again to ruin, have a charm To hallow all the world. The sweetest sounds Are those most near akin to silences, Such as sea whispers rippling at the prow When the loud engine ceases, muffled bells, Or wandering waves of dying harmony In echoing minsters; and the sweetest notes Of Life are those that reach us from afar,-- Those wafted whispers of humanity And Love and Death, that none can ever hear Amid the mighty voices of the world. This is a little spot of neutral ground Beside the pilgrim road, between the world We know of and the world of which we dream. The summer wind that blows outside and bends The flowers that grow upon the chancel wall Sounds far away; the sunbeams falling here Look other than the common light that floods The meadowlands beyond, and overhead The roof of noonday sky is all its own. The story written now upon these walls Is not of scenes in long forgotten hours: Another meaning and another life Which keeps that past within it, as a tree Hides vanished sunlight, has outlived the old: These ruins hold our hearts, not theirs who built. For though erewhile I fell into a dream Of summer on a morning long ago, Saw knightly men and noble ladies cross The sward of green and climb the winding stair And enter at the doorway one by one; Though of their fellowship a while I seemed, Knelt there at matins, watched the sunlight fall Through the dim traceries, and stain the floor With rose and gold where now the grass is green,-- I looked for something which I could not find, There was a want of something I had known, An emptiness at heart, as though all life Had dwindled from its high significance. And soon the sound of the Gregorian Grew ghostly in my ears; the simpler faith My soul accepted in that former world Was troubled, and once more the chapel walls Were ruined, and the infinite blue sky Became a roof above the empty nave. But lo! the wind, which was the same soft wind That roamed about the chapel walls of old, Had gathered from the ages a new voice And breathed the soul of an unfathomed life; The skies were deeper; in the wayside flowers The beauty dreaming at the heart of things Seemed nearer than before; and in my heart Beat the strong pulses of the larger hope, The grander sorrows, the sublimer wrongs, The nobler freedom and the truer love, Which the great world has won upon its way And learned from century to century.

Nay! from our world we cannot long escape,-- Its voices are around me, even here Within the ruined cloisters of the past; But here to pilgrim wayfarers they sound No longer clamorous and harsh, but met By dreams of the eternal and unknown They make a whispered music in our ears,-- Even as sea-tides flowing up the stream Meet the strong rapids breaking among rocks, And lull their tumult to a rippled song.

NORTH AND SOUTH

In foam of rose the long waves broke below The lemon trees, and gold and amethyst The inland mountains gleamed. It was the land we dreamed of long ago; But now we looked on it we somewhere missed The light of which we dreamed.

Beside the oleander and the clove, And alien midst many a flaming plant Of gold and cinnabar, Beyond the garden stood a black-green grove Of pine-trees, set by some old emigrant Who knew the polar star.

The shadows deepened in that land unknown; And presently great stars appeared above In unfamiliar deeps. The wind’s voice and the water’s undertone Were soft as a forgotten touch of love That comes to one who sleeps.

The night began the garden scents to steal; The sea grew silver in the rising moon, And violet the sky. We looked on splendour that we did not feel; Strange charms, to which our souls were not in tune, Touched us and drifted by.

Then the wind rose and from the pines drew forth Ancestral whispers of their land of birth,-- Dark heath and stormy shore; And all the wistful magic of the north And all the old enchantment of the earth Enfolded us once more.

The north interpreted the south: dreams dreamed In childhood gave reality its soul, And filled the earth again With vanished wonder; while far off I seemed To hear wild seas beyond a pine-wood roll At dusk in wind and rain.

INTERPENETRATIONS

Larks sang up in the morning sky, Wild flowers shone in the dew: The joy that dwells at the heart of things The birds and the wild flowers knew. The sea-waves broke on a lonely shore, The wind went over the trees: The sorrow that dwells at the heart of things Was known to the winds and seas.

The sorrow borne on the wind’s song The note of a bird made sweet; And the broken song of the breaking waves Seemed written in blue and golden staves In the flowers that grew at our feet. Secrets hid from the flowers of the field In the wandering wind we heard; And the stars of gold and the bells of blue Of the wild flowers, gave us again the clue That we missed in the song of the bird. And something the winds and seas forgot And the wild flowers left untold Lay dim in the rose of the twilight sky And shone in the starlight’s gold.

For the meaning that dwells in all things, The story of every heart, Is the same,--the infinite story of all Whereof each telleth a part:-- Tidings mightier, graver, Than a single voice can utter, Too deep and solemn a secret To sleep in a single breast; But the voice of each makes truer The voices of all the rest; And each repeats of the story The part that it loves the best.

LIFE AND LOVE

Weeds and flowers grow and die; Sunlight never is withholden. There were flowers long ago, Others coming by and by:-- Do they for the light’s sake grow, Or for their sake is it golden?

Hope and sorrow, joy and strife, Years and pleasures new and olden Leave us: Love alone has stayed. Grew then Love because of Life? Or was Love for Life’s sake made, But for it were unbeholden?

BRICK HORIZONS

Here the old map a woodland marks, With rivers winding through the hills; And prints remain of spacious parks, And gabled farms and watermills.

But now we see no fields to reap, No flowers to welcome sun and rain: The hillside is a cinder heap, The river is an inky drain.

The modern town of red brick streets, Row beyond row, and shelf on shelf, On one side spreads until it meets A town as dreary as itself; And on the other side its arms Of road and tramway are out-thrust, And mutilate the fields and farms, And shame the woods with noise and dust.

Here, from the scenes we love remote, Dwell half the toilers of the land,-- The soul we think of as a vote, The heart we speak of as a hand.

Dull sons of a mechanic age Who claim but miss the rights of man,-- They have no dreams beyond their cage, They know not of the haunts of Pan.

Here, wandering through mills and mines And dreary streets each like the last, Enclosed by brick horizon lines, I found an island of the past.

A few sad fields, a few old trees, In that new world of grime and smoke Told me the time was springtime; these Alone remembered and awoke.

And in the grass were stars and bells, The immemorial blossomings That spring to greet us from the wells Of Beauty at the heart of things.

A lark sang overhead, its note Had the same joy with which it fills The morning, when we hear it float Through crystal air on thymy hills.

We mar the earth, our modern toil Defaces old and lovely things; We soil the stream, we cannot soil The brightness of Life’s fountain springs.

Here where man’s last progressive aim Has stamped the green earth with the brand Of want and greed, and put to shame Her beauty, and we see the land

With mine and factory and street Deformed, and filled with dreary lives,-- Here, too, Life’s fountain springs are sweet: Our venture fails, God’s hope survives.

And in the heart of every child Born in this brick horizon ring The flowers of wonderland grow wild, The birds of El Dorado sing.

FIRST PATHWAYS

Where were the pathways that your childhood knew?-- In mountain glens? or by the ocean strands? Or where, beyond the ripening harvest land, The distant hills were blue?

Where evening sunlight threw a golden haze Over a mellow city’s walls and towers? Or where the fields and lanes were bright with flowers, In quiet woodland ways?

And whether here or there, or east or west, That place you dwelt in first was holy ground; Its shelter was the kindest you have found, Its pathways were the best.

And even in the city’s smoke and mire I doubt not that a golden light was shed On those first paths, and that they also led To lands of heart’s desire.

And where the children in dark alleys penned, Heard the caged lark sing of the April hills, Or where they dammed the muddy gutter rills, Or made a dog their friend; Or where they gathered, dancing hand in hand, About the organ man, for them, too, lay Beyond the dismal alley’s entrance way, The gates of wonderland.

For ’tis my faith that Earth’s first words are sweet To all her children,--never a rebuff; And that we only saw, where ways were rough, The flowers about our feet.

HIDDEN PATHS

You see a house of weathered stone, A pillared gate, a courtyard wide, And ancient trees that almost hide The garden wild and overgrown; You see the sheltering screen of pines Beyond the farmyard and the fold, And upland cornfields waving gold Against the blue horizon lines; But we of every field and wall And room are now so much a part, We seem to touch a living heart And rather feel than see it all.

You pass the broken arch that spanned The garden walk,--you note the weeds, But miss our secret path that leads To hidden nooks of wonderland; And, where the faded rooms you mark, You know not of the ancient spell That o’er them in the firelight fell When all the world outside was dark.

Elsewhere is your enchanted ground, Your secret path, your treasure store; And those who sojourned here before Saw marvels we have never found. For Earth is full of hidden ways More wondrous than the ways it shows, And treasures that outnumber those For which men labour all their days.

THE PATHS OF THE INFINITE

Have we not marked Earth’s limits, followed its long ways round, Charted our island world, and seen how the measureless deep Sunders it, holds it remote, that still in our hearts we keep A faith in a path that links our shores with a shore unfound?

No quest the venturer waits, no world have we to explore; But still the voices that called us far over the lands and seas Whisper of stranger countries and lonelier deeps than these, In the wind on the hill, and the reeds on the lake, and the wave on the shore.

Never beyond our Earth shall the venturer find a guide: From the golden light of the stars, but not from the stars, a clue May fall to the Earth; and the rose of eve and the noonday blue Veil with celestial beauty the fathomless deeps they hide.

They have their bounds those deeps, and the ways that end are long; But the soul seeks not for an end,--its infinite paths are near; Over its unknown seas by the light of a dream we steer, Through its enchanted isles we sail on an ancient song.

Here, where a man and a maid in the dusk of the evening meet, Here, where a grave is green and the larks are singing above, The secret of life everlasting is held in a name that we love, And the paths of the infinite gleam through the flowers that grow at our feet.

A DESERTED HOME

Here where the fields lie lonely and untended, Once stood the old house grey among the trees, Once to the hills rolled the waves of the cornland-- Long waves and golden, softer than the sea’s.

Long, long ago has the ploughshare rusted, Long has the barn stood roofless and forlorn; But oh! far away are some who still remember The songs of the young girls binding up the corn.

Here where the windows shone across the darkness, Here where the stars once watched above the fold, Still watch the stars, but the sheepfold is empty; Falls now the rain where the hearth glowed of old.

Here where the leagues of melancholy loughsedge Moan in the wind round the grey forsaken shore, Once waved the corn in the mid-month of autumn, Once sped the dance when the corn was on the floor.

BEYOND THE FARTHEST HORIZON

We have dreamed dreams beyond our comprehending, Visions too beautiful to be untrue; We have seen mysteries that yield no clue, And sought our goals on ways that have no ending. We, creatures of the earth, The lowly born, the mortal, the foredoomed To spend our fleeting moments on the spot Wherein to-morrow we shall be entombed, And hideously rot,-- We have seen loveliness that shall not pass; We have beheld immortal destinies; We have seen Heaven and Hell and joined their strife; Ay, we whose flesh shall perish as the grass Have flung the passion of the heart that dies Into the hope of everlasting life.

Oh, miracle of human sight! That leaps beyond our earthly prison bars To wander in the pathways of the stars Across the lone abysses of the night. Oh, miracle of thought! that still outsweeps Our vision, and beyond its range surveys The vistas of interminable ways, The chasms of unfathomable deeps, Renewed forevermore, until at last The endless and the ended alike seem Impossible, and all becomes a dream; And from their crazy watch-tower in the vast Those wild-winged thoughts again to earth descend To hide from the unfathomed and unknown, And seek the shelter love has made our own On homely paths that in a graveyard end. Oh, miracles of sight and thought and dream! You do but lead us to a farther gate, A higher window in the prison wall That bounds our mortal state: However far you lift us we must fall. But lo! remains the miracle supreme,-- That we, whom Death and Change have shown our fate, We, the chance progeny of Earth and Time, Should ask for more than Earth and Time create, And, goalless and without the strength to climb, Should dare to climb where we were born to grope; That we the lowly could conceive the great, Dream in our dust of destinies sublime, And link our moments to immortal hope.