Part 12

Ah, but his task, his endless task on earth, Bent his head earthward. He must find the way Before he claimed the heights. No Newton he; Though men began to acclaim him and his law As though they solved all mysteries and annulled All former creeds, and changed the heart of heaven. No Newton he; not even a Galileo; But one who patiently, doggedly laboured on, As Tycho Brahe laboured in old days, Numbering the stars, recording fact on fact, For those, who, after centuries, might discern The meaning and the cause of what he saw. Visions of God and Heaven were not for him, Unless his “facts” revealed them, as the crown Of his own fight for knowledge. It might be The final test of man, the narrow way Proving him worthy of immortal life, That he should face this darkness and this death Worthily and renounce all easy hope, All consolation, all but the wintry smile Upon the face of Truth as he discerns it, Here upon earth, his only glimmer of light, Leading him onward to an end unknown. Faith! Faith! O patient, inarticulate soul, If this were faithlessness, there was a Power, So whispered Shadow-of-a-Leaf, that shared it with him; The Power that bowed His glory into darkness To make a world in suffering and in death, The passionate price that even the Omnipotent Must pay for love, and love’s undying crown.

He hardly heard the whisper; could not hear it And keep his own resolve. He bowed his head In darkness; and, henceforth, those inward gates Into the realms of the supernal light Began to close. He knew that they were closing; And yet—was this the dark key to Creation?— He shared the ecstasy also; shared that sense Of triumph; broke the Bread and drank the Wine In sacred drops and morsels of the truth; Shared, in renouncement of all else but truth, A sense that he could never breathe in words To any one else, a sense that in this age It was expedient that a man should lose The glory, and die this darker new-found death, To save the people from their rounded creeds, Their faithless faith, and crowns too lightly won.

...

O, yet the memory of one midnight hour! _Would that she knew. Would God that she knew now...._ Truer than all his knowledge was that cry; The cry of the blind life struggling through the dark, Upward ... the blind brow lifted to the unseen.

He groped along the dark unending way And saw, although he knew not what he saw, Out of the struggle of life, a mightier law Emerging; and, when man could rise no higher By the fierce law of Nature, he beheld Nature herself at war against herself. He heard, although he knew not what he heard, A Voice that, triumphing over her clashing chords, Resolved them into an infinite harmony. Whose was that Voice? What Power within the flesh Cast off the flesh for a glory in the mind, And leapt to victory in self-conquering love? What Voice, whose Power, cast Nature underfoot In Bruno, when the flames gnawed at his flesh; In Socrates; and, in those obscure Christs Who daily die; and, though none other sees, Lay hands upon the wheel of the universe And master it; and the sun stands dark at noon? These things he saw but dimly. All his life He moved along the steep and difficult way Of Truth in darkness; but the Voice of Truth Whispered in darkness, out of the mire and day, And through the blood-stained agony of the world, “Fear nothing. Follow Me. I _am_ the Way.” So, when Death touched him also, and England bore His dust into her deepening innermost shrine, The Voice he heard long since, and could not hear, Rose like the fuller knowledge, given by Death To one that could best lead him upward now, Rose like a child’s voice, opening up the heavens, _I am the Resurrection and the Life_.

X—EPILOGUE

Up the Grand Canyon the full morning flowed. I heard the voices moving through the abyss With the deep sound of pine-woods, league on league Of singing boughs, each separate, each a voice, Yet all one music; _The Eternal Mind_ _Enfolds all changes, and can never change._

_Man is not exiled from this Majesty,_ _The inscrutable Reality, which he shares_ _In his immortal essence. Man that doubts_ _All but the sensuous veils of colour and sound,_ _The appearances that he can measure and weigh,_ _Trusts, as the very fashioner of his doubt,_ _The imponderable thought that weighs the worlds,_ _The invisible thought that sees; thought that reveals_ _The miracle of the eternal paradox—_ _The pure unsearchable Being that cannot be_ _Yet IS, and still creates and governs all;_ _A Power that, being unknowable, is best known;_ _For this transcendent Being can reply_ _To every agony, “I am that which waits_ _Beyond the last horizon of your pain,_ _Beyond your wildest hope, your last despair,_ _Above your heaven, and deeper than your hell._ _There is not room on earth for what ye seek._ _Is there not room in Me?”_ _Time is a shadow_ _Of man’s own thought. Things past and things to come_ _Are closed in that full circle. He lives and reigns;_ _Dies with the dying bird; and, in its death_ _Receives it to His heart. No leaf can fall_ _Without Him; who, for ever pouring out_ _His passion into worlds that shall attain_ _Love in the highest at last, returns for ever_ _Along these roads of suffering and of death,_ _With all their lives upgathered to His heart_ _Into the heaven of heavens. How else could life_ _Lay hold on its infinitude, or win_ _The strength to walk with Love in complete light?_ _For, as a child that learns to walk on earth,_ _Life learns these little rhythms of earthly law,_ _Listens to simple seas that ebb and flow,_ _And spells the large bright order of the stars_ _Wherein the moving Reason is revealed_ _To mans up-struggling mind, or breathed like song_ _Into the quiet heart, as love to love._ _So, step by step, the spirit of man ascends_ _Through joy and grief; and is withdrawn by death_ _From the sweet dust that might content it here_ _Into His kingdom, the one central goal_ _Of the universal agony. He lives._ _He lives and reigns, throned above Space and Time;_ _And, in that realm, freedom and law are one;_ _Fore-knowledge and all-knowledge and free-will,_ _Make everlasting music._ Far away Along the unfathomable abyss it flowed, A harmony so consummate that it shared The silence of the sky; a song so deep That only the still soul could hear it now: _New every morning the creative Word_ _Moves upon chaos. Yea, our God grows young._ _Here, now, the eternal miracle is renewed_ _Now, and for ever, God makes heaven and earth._