Part 8

Could ye bless him, father--mother, Bless the dimple in his cheek? Dare ye look at one another And the benediction speak? Would ye not break out in weeping and confess yourselves too weak?

XII.

He is harmless, ye are sinful; Ye are troubled, he at ease; From his slumber virtue winful Floweth outward with increase. Dare not bless him! but be blessed by his peace, and go in peace.

_THE FOURFOLD ASPECT._

I.

When ye stood up in the house With your little childish feet, And, in touching Life's first shows, First the touch of Love did meet,-- Love and Nearness seeming one, By the heartlight cast before, And of all Beloveds, none Standing farther than the door; Not a name being dear to thought, With its owner beyond call; Not a face, unless it brought Its own shadow to the wall; When the worst recorded change Was of apple dropt from bough, When love's sorrow seemed more strange Than love's treason can seem now;-- Then, the Loving took you up Soft, upon their elder knees, Telling why the statues droop Underneath the churchyard trees, And how ye must lie beneath them Through the winters long and deep, Till the last trump overbreathe them, And ye smile out of your sleep. Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if they said A tale of fairy ships With a swan-wing for a sail; Oh, ye kissed their loving lips For the merry merry tale-- So carelessly ye thought upon the Dead!

II.

Soon ye read in solemn stories Of the men of long ago, Of the pale bewildering glories Shining farther than we know; Of the heroes with the laurel, Of the poets with the bay, Of the two worlds' earnest quarrel For that beauteous Helena; How Achilles at the portal Of the tent heard footsteps nigh, And his strong heart, half-immortal, Met the _keitai_ with a cry; How Ulysses left the sunlight For the pale eidola race Blank and passive through the dun light, Staring blindly in his face; How that true wife said to Poetus, With calm smile and wounded heart, "Sweet, it hurts not!" How Admetus Saw his blessed one depart; How King Arthur proved his mission, And Sir Roland wound his horn, And at Sangreal's moony vision Swords did bristle round like corn. Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed, the while ye read, That this Death, then, must be found A Valhalla for the crowned, The heroic who prevail: None, be sure can enter in Far below a paladin Of a noble noble tale-- So awfully ye thought upon the Dead!

III.

Ay, but soon ye woke up shrieking, As a child that wakes at night From a dream of sisters speaking In a garden's summer-light,-- That wakes, starting up and bounding, In a lonely lonely bed, With a wall of darkness round him, Stifling black about his head! And the full sense of your mortal Rushed upon you deep and loud, And ye heard the thunder hurtle From the silence of the cloud. Funeral-torches at your gateway Threw a dreadful light within. All things changed: you rose up straightway, And saluted Death and Sin. Since, your outward man has rallied, And your eye and voice grown bold; Yet the Sphinx of Life stands pallid, With her saddest secret told. Happy places have grown holy: If ye went where once ye went, Only tears would fall down slowly, As at solemn sacrament. Merry books, once read for pastime, If ye dared to read again, Only memories of the last time Would swim darkly up the brain. Household names, which used to flutter Through your laughter unawares,-- God's Divinest ye could utter With less trembling in your prayers. Ye have dropt adown your head, and it seems as if ye tread On your own hearts in the path Ye are called to in His wrath, And your prayers go up in wail --"Dost Thou see, then, all our loss, O Thou agonized on cross? Art thou reading all its tale?" So mournfully ye think upon the Dead!

IV.

Pray, pray, thou who also weepest, And the drops will slacken so. Weep, weep, and the watch thou keepest With a quicker count will go. Think: the shadow on the dial For the nature most undone, Marks the passing of the trial, Proves the presence of the sun. Look, look up, in starry passion, To the throne above the spheres: Learn: the spirit's gravitation Still must differ from the tear's. Hope: with all the strength thou usest In embracing thy despair. Love: the earthly love thou losest Shall return to thee more fair. Work: make clear the forest-tangles Of the wildest stranger-land Trust: the blessed deathly angels Whisper, "Sabbath hours at hand!" By the heart's wound when most gory, By the longest agony, Smile! Behold in sudden glory The TRANSFIGURED smiles on _thee_! And ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if He said, "My Beloved, is it so? Have ye tasted of my woe? Of my Heaven ye shall not fail!" He stands brightly where the shade is, With the keys of Death and Hades, And there, ends the mournful tale-- So hopefully ye think upon the Dead!

_NIGHT AND THE MERRY MAN._

NIGHT.

'Neath my moon what doest thou, With a somewhat paler brow Than she giveth to the ocean? He, without a pulse or motion, Muttering low before her stands, Lifting his invoking hands Like a seer before a sprite, To catch her oracles of light: But thy soul out-trembles now Many pulses on thy brow. Where be all thy laughters clear, Others laughed alone to hear? Where thy quaint jests, said for fame? Where thy dances, mixed with game? Where thy festive companies, Mooned o'er with ladies' eyes All more bright for thee, I trow? 'Neath my moon what doest thou?

THE MERRY MAN.

I am digging my warm heart Till I find its coldest part; I am digging wide and low, Further than a spade will go, Till that, when the pit is deep And large enough, I there may heap All my present pain and past Joy, dead things that look aghast By the daylight: now 't is done. Throw them in, by one and one! I must laugh, at rising sun.

* * * * *

Memories--of fancy's golden Treasures which my hands have holden, Till the chillness made them ache; Of childhood's hopes that used to wake If birds were in a singing strain, And for less cause, sleep again; Of the moss-seat in the wood Where I trysted solitude; Of the hill-top where the wind Used to follow me behind, Then in sudden rush to blind Both my glad eyes with my hair, Taken gladly in the snare; Of the climbing up the rocks, Of the playing 'neath the oaks Which retain beneath them now Only shadow of the bough; Of the lying on the grass While the clouds did overpass, Only they, so lightly driven, Seeming betwixt me and Heaven; Of the little prayers serene, Murmuring of earth and sin; Of large-leaved philosophy Leaning from my childish knee; Of poetic book sublime, Soul-kissed for the first dear time, Greek or English, ere I knew Life was not a poem too:-- Throw them in, by one and one! I must laugh, at rising sun.

* * * * *

--Of the glorious ambitions Yet unquenched by their fruitions Of the reading out the nights; Of the straining at mad heights; Of achievements, less descried By a dear few than magnified; Of praises from the many earned When praise from love was undiscerned; Of the sweet reflecting gladness Softened by itself to sadness:-- Throw them in, by one and one! I must laugh, at rising sun.

* * * * *

What are these? more, more than these! Throw in dearer memories!-- Of voices whereof but to speak Makes mine own all sunk and weak; Of smiles the thought of which is sweeping All my soul to floods of weeping; Of looks whose absence fain would weigh My looks to the ground for aye; Of clasping hands--ah me, I wring Mine, and in a tremble fling Downward, downward all this paining! Partings with the sting remaining, Meetings with a deeper throe Since the joy is ruined so, Changes with a fiery burning, (Shadows upon all the turning,) Thoughts of ... with a storm they came, _Them_ I have not breath to name: Downward, downward be they cast In the pit! and now at last My work beneath the moon is done, And I shall laugh, at rising sun.

* * * * *

But let me pause or ere I cover All my treasures darkly over: I will speak not in thine ears, Only tell my beaded tears Silently, most silently. When the last is calmly told, Let that same moist rosary With the rest sepulchred be, Finished now! The darksome mould Sealeth up the darksome pit. I will lay no stone on it, Grasses I will sow instead, Fit for Queen Titania's tread; Flowers, encoloured with the sun, And ~ai ai~ written upon none; Thus, whenever saileth by The Lady World of dainty eye, Not a grief shall here remain, Silken shoon to damp or stain: And while she lisps, "I have not seen Any place more smooth and clean" ... Here she cometh!--Ha, ha!--who Laughs as loud as I can do?

_EARTH AND HER PRAISERS._

I.

The Earth is old; Six thousand winters make her heart a-cold; The sceptre slanteth from her palsied hold. She saith, "'Las me! God's word that I was 'good' Is taken back to heaven, From whence when any sound comes, I am riven By some sharp bolt; and now no angel would Descend with sweet dew-silence on my mountains, To glorify the lovely river fountains That gush along their side: I see--O weary change!--I see instead This human wrath and pride, These thrones and tombs, judicial wrong and blood, And bitter words are poured upon mine head-- 'O Earth! thou art a stage for tricks unholy, A church for most remorseful melancholy; Thou art so spoilt, we should forget we had An Eden in thee, wert thou not so sad!' Sweet children, I am old! ye, every one, Do keep me from a portion of my sun. Give praise in change for brightness! That I may shake my hills in infiniteness Of breezy laughter, as in youthful mirth, To hear Earth's sons and daughters praising Earth."

II.

Whereupon a child began With spirit running up to man As by angels' shining ladder, (May he find no cloud above!) Seeming he had ne'er been sadder All his days than now, Sitting in the chestnut grove, With that joyous overflow Of smiling from his mouth o'er brow And cheek and chin, as if the breeze Leaning tricksy from the trees To part his golden hairs, had blown Into an hundred smiles that one.

III.

"O rare, rare Earth!" he saith, "I will praise thee presently; Not to-day; I have no breath: I have hunted squirrels three-- Two ran down in the furzy hollow Where I could not see nor follow, One sits at the top of the filbert-tree, With a yellow nut and a mock at me: Presently it shall be done! When I see which way these two have run, When the mocking one at the filbert-top Shall leap a-down and beside me stop, Then, rare Earth, rare Earth, Will I pause, having known thy worth, To say all good of thee!"

IV.

Next a lover,--with a dream 'Neath his waking eyelids hidden, And a frequent sigh unbidden, And an idlesse all the day Beside a wandering stream, And a silence that is made Of a word he dares not say,-- Shakes slow his pensive head: "Earth, Earth!" saith he, "If spirits, like thy roses, grew On one stalk, and winds austere Could but only blow them near, To share each other's dew;-- If, when summer rains agree To beautify thy hills, I knew Looking off them I might see Some one very beauteous too,-- Then Earth," saith he, "I would praise ... nay, nay--not _thee_!"

V.

Will the pedant name her next? Crabbed with a crabbed text Sits he in his study nook, With his elbow on a book, And with stately crossed knees, And a wrinkle deeply thrid Through his lowering brow, Caused by making proofs enow That Plato in "Parmenides" Meant the same Spinoza did,-- Or, that an hundred of the groping Like himself, had made one Homer, _Homeros_ being a misnomer What hath _he_ to do with praise Of Earth or aught? Whene'er the sloping Sunbeams through his window daze His eyes off from the learned phrase, Straightway he draws close the curtain. May abstraction keep him dumb! Were his lips to ope, 't is certain "_Derivatum est_" would come.

VI.

Then a mourner moveth pale In a silence full of wail, Raising not his sunken head Because he wandered last that way With that one beneath the clay: Weeping not, because that one, The only one who would have said "Cease to weep, beloved!" has gone Whence returneth comfort none. The silence breaketh suddenly,-- "Earth, I praise thee!" crieth he, "Thou hast a grave for also _me_."

VII.

Ha, a poet! know him by The ecstasy-dilated eye, Not uncharged with tears that ran Upward from his heart of man; By the cheek, from hour to hour, Kindled bright or sunken wan With a sense of lonely power; By the brow uplifted higher Than others, for more low declining By the lip which words of fire Overboiling have burned white While they gave the nations light: Ay, in every time and place Ye may know the poet's face By the shade or shining.

VIII.

'Neath a golden cloud he stands, Spreading his impassioned hands. "O God's Earth!" he saith, "the sign From the Father-soul to mine Of all beauteous mysteries, Of all perfect images Which, divine in His divine, In my human only are Very excellent and fair! Think not, Earth, that I would raise Weary forehead in thy praise, (Weary, that I cannot go Farther from thy region low,) If were struck no richer meanings From thee than thyself. The leaning Of the close trees o'er the brim Of a sunshine-haunted stream Have a sound beneath their leaves, Not of wind, not of wind, Which the poet's voice achieves: The faint mountains, heaped behind, Have a falling on their tops, Not of dew, not of dew, Which the poet's fancy drops: Viewless things his eyes can view Driftings of his dream do light All the skies by day and night, And the seas that deepest roll Carry murmurs of his soul. 'Earth, I praise thee! praise thou _me_! God perfecteth his creation With this recipient poet-passion, And makes the beautiful to be. I praise thee, O beloved sign, From the God-soul unto mine! Praise me, that I cast on thee The cunning sweet interpretation, The help and glory and dilation Of mine immortality!"

IX.

There was silence. None did dare To use again the spoken air Of that far-charming voice, until A Christian resting on the hill, With a thoughtful smile subdued (Seeming learnt in solitude) Which a weeper might have viewed Without new tears, did softly say, And looked up unto heaven alway While he praised the Earth-- "O Earth, I count the praises thou art worth, By thy waves that move aloud, By thy hills against the cloud, By thy valleys warm and green, By the copses' elms between, By their birds which, like a sprite Scattered by a strong delight Into fragments musical, Stir and sing in every bush; By thy silver founts that fall, As if to entice the stars at night To thine heart; by grass and rush, And little weeds the children pull, Mistook for flowers! --Oh, beautiful Art thou, Earth, albeit worse Than in heaven is called good! Good to us, that we may know Meekly from thy good to go; While the holy, crying Blood Puts its music kind and low 'Twixt such ears as are not dull, And thine ancient curse!

X.

"Praised be the mosses soft In thy forest pathways oft, And the thorns, which make us think Of the thornless river-brink Where the ransomed tread: Praised be thy sunny gleams, And the storm, that worketh dreams Of calm unfinished: Praised be thine active days, And thy night-time's solemn need, When in God's dear book we read _No night shall be therein_: Praised be thy dwellings warm By household faggot's cheerful blaze, Where, to hear of pardoned sin, Pauseth oft the merry din, Save the babe's upon the arm Who croweth to the crackling wood: Yea, and, better understood, Praised be thy dwellings cold, Hid beneath the churchyard mould, Where the bodies of the saints Separate from earthly taints Lie asleep, in blessing bound, Waiting for the trumpet's sound To free them into blessing;--none Weeping more beneath the sun, Though dangerous words of human love Be graven very near, above.

XI.

"Earth, we Christians praise thee thus, Even for the change that comes With a grief from thee to us: For thy cradles and thy tombs, For the pleasant corn and wine And summer-heat; and also for The frost upon the sycamore And hail upon the vine!"

_THE VIRGIN MARY TO THE CHILD JESUS._

But see the Virgin blest Hath laid her babe to rest.

MILTON'S _Hymn on the Nativity_.

I.

Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One! My flesh, my Lord!--what name? I do not know A name that seemeth not too high or low, Too far from me or heaven: My Jesus, _that_ is best! that word being given By the majestic angel whose command Was softly as a man's beseeching said, When I and all the earth appeared to stand In the great overflow Of light celestial from his wings and head. Sleep, sleep, my saving One!

II.

And art Thou come for saving, baby-browed And speechless Being--art Thou come for saving? The palm that grows beside our door is bowed By treadings of the low wind from the south, A restless shadow through the chamber waving: Upon its bough a bird sings in the sun, But Thou, with that close slumber on Thy mouth, Dost seem of wind and sun already weary. Art come for saving, O my weary One?

III.

Perchance this sleep that shutteth out the dreary Earth-sounds and motions, opens on Thy soul High dreams on fire with God; High songs that make the pathways where they roll More bright than stars do theirs; and visions new Of Thine eternal Nature's old abode. Suffer this mother's kiss, Best thing that earthly is, To glide the music and the glory through, Nor narrow in Thy dream the broad upliftings Of any seraph wing. Thus noiseless, thus. Sleep, sleep my dreaming One!

IV.

The slumber of His lips meseems to run Through _my_ lips to mine heart, to all its shiftings Of sensual life, bringing contrariousness In a great calm. I feel I could lie down As Moses did, and die,[7]--and then live most. I am 'ware of you, heavenly Presences, That stand with your peculiar light unlost, Each forehead with a high thought for a crown, Unsunned i' the sunshine! I am 'ware. Ye throw No shade against the wall! How motionless Ye round me with your living statuary, While through your whiteness, in and outwardly, Continual thoughts of God appear to go, Like light's soul in itself. I bear, I bear To look upon the dropt lids of your eyes, Though their external shining testifies To that beatitude within which were Enough to blast an eagle at his sun: I fall not on my sad clay face before ye,-- I look on His. I know My spirit which dilateth with the woe Of His mortality, May well contain your glory. Yea, drop your lids more low. Ye are but fellow-worshippers with me! Sleep, sleep, my worshipped One!

V.

We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon Thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

VI.

I am not proud--meek angels, ye invest New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest On mortal lips,--"I am not proud"--_not proud!_ Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son, Albeit over Him my head is bowed As others bow before Him, still mine heart Bows lower than their knees. O centuries That roll in vision your futurities My future grave athwart,-- Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep Watch o'er this sleep,-- Say of me as the Heavenly said--"Thou art The blessedest of women!"--blessedest, Not holiest, not noblest, no high name Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame When I sit meek in heaven! For me, for me, God knows that I am feeble like the rest! I often wandered forth, more child than maiden Among the midnight hills of Galilee Whose summits looked heaven-laden, Listening to silence as it seemed to be God's voice, so soft yet strong, so fain to press Upon my heart as heaven did on the height, And waken up its shadows by a light, And show its vileness by a holiness. Then I knelt down most silent like the night, Too self-renounced for fears, Raising my small face to the boundless blue Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears: God heard _them_ falling after, with His dew.

VII.

So, seeing my corruption, can I see This Incorruptible now born of me, This fair new Innocence no sun did chance To shine on, (for even Adam was no child,) Created from my nature all defiled, This mystery, from out mine ignorance,-- Nor feel the blindness, stain, corruption, more Than others do, or _I_ did heretofore? Can hands wherein such burden pure has been, Not open with the cry "unclean, unclean," More oft than any else beneath the skies? Ah King, ah, Christ, ah son! The kine, the shepherds, the abased wise Must all less lowly wait Than I, upon Thy state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

VIII.