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THE DEMON.
I.
Cradled in earth's diviner wealth,The costly breath of infancy,—
That orbed the ruddy limbs to be
Like dimpled coral tinct with health,—
A new soul beamed its mortal joy
Through the fresh eyelids of a boy.
II.
He lay couched on the silent margeOf boundless mights, that deeply swelled
In tune with mights that in him welled,—
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That where in inward light he lay
The happiest sunbeams came to play.
III.
And with them played a sunnier light,Quelling with swollen tides of work
The jealous stains of busy murk,—
Beauty's illuminings, clean and bright
As Seraph's phantasies of power,
And to all being a sumless dower.
IV.
And still another braid of beams—As her loost hair a maiden's feet—
Enwinds him in their hallowed heat:
With such electric current streams
Love on his head, an answering flood
Leaps through his eyes and rose cheek's blood;
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V.
So that he lay a lump of joy,A fount spouted through hundred jets
Of smiles. And Beauty, pausing, lets
Love have his will on the dear boy:
For Beauty can not do Love's duty,
Nor even Love do that of Beauty.—
VI.
Sunbeam by hasty blackness quenched,Of light were not more swift deflowered
Than that blest boy. So low he cowered,
As being's pivot had been wrenched,
Or he had heard through his mother's kisses
Cold whisperings from a serpent's hisses.
VII.
Lower and lower quailed the boy.Choked by gaunt Pallor's pulseless breath,—
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He lay a new-launched wreck of joy,
Wrecked in broad day, and none could see
The sudden rock of his misery.
VIII.
Whence that despiteous covert thrill?Are his young eyeballs glazed by glare
Of bristling monster clutched from air?
Or are his terrors ghostlier still?
Do subtler spectres inly creep
Through the dim chambers left by sleep?
IX.
Mightier than even the might of thought,—That grasps in the gauge of its great seeing
The deep magnificence of being,—
Is love, here to its utmost wrought,
Swift filtered through earth's holiest part,
A trembling large maternal heart;
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X.
Whence now in flood so warm it gushed,—Like sane looks poured on madman's eyes,
Stilling their lunar ecstasies,—
The boy's cold terror melted: hushed,
His tears ceased falling on her breast,
And there he sobbed his moan to rest.
XI.
And angered Beauty,—quick returnedTo where the love-rockt infant slept,—
With Love and Life such vigil kept,
That when he waked his rose cheek burned,
As o'er its joy had never passed
A viewless spectre's whitening blast.
XII.
And still as on the road he skippedFrom childhood's smile to boyhood's laugh,
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The cup from gladness' river dipt,
Such shadow on him strange would fall
The draught grew thick in sudden gall.
XIII.
But on the panting hearts of boysE'en weight of shadows cannot lie:
Betossed on fitful lights they die,
Scourged by the nimble whip of joys,—
Pet brood of omnipresent truth,
Th' invisible spirit-guard of youth.—
XIV.
The strenuous ploughman's obdurate treadLess cold entombs the suppliant flowers—
All young and diadem'd with showers—
Than fresh-crowned manhood's vaulting head
Scorns the late urchin's puny joys,
Counting them but a witless noise.
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XV.
The boy has thought himself to man,And stoutly covets manly prizes.
As the first ray from sun that rises,
Striking a hill or barbacan,
Chafes the strong eye of plumèd troop,
Embattled for the lusted swoop,
XVI.
On him, elate and heated, blazed—Like beckoning lights in happiest dreams—
A virgin drift of Hope's brisk beams,
As, proud and glad, he dauntless gazed
Where, glittering in the dewy sun,
Wide lay the victories to be won.
XVII.
How trustful broad doth prophesyThe heart, when new and strong and good!
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As in first Adam's, folded lie
The potencies that are to be
The all of human destiny.
XVIII.
Yet not for seer fulfilment is.Young hearts are but a magic glass,
Whereon just flash, then quickly pass
Life's gorgeous possibilities
Back to the future's calm abyss,
To sleep till light shall wake their bliss.
XIX.
Against his thought he soon was sad.Besprent by ceaseless rain of sorrow,
He saw each day entoiled by its morrow,
Coy good constrained by brazen bad;
Ever beside warm quickening wombs
The frosty deeps of infant tombs.—
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XX.
And now th' invisible rays of thought—White-heated by beleaguering fires
In the quick furnace of desires—
Are to such plastic temper wrought,
They forge, of mingled ores compact,
The humming wheels of human act.
XXI.
But when, hot from the surgy brain,The generous, guiltless, young ideal
First meets the old grim sordid real,
Like heated bar immersed, with pain
Winces the soul, and dark and cold
Inward recoils to griefs untold.
XXII.
But love will blench at no ordeal;And who shall set on thought a cope?
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Young mothers of the hale ideal,
Who in benignant longings bask,
Grow stronger, younger at their task;
XXIII.
Aye, ever stronger, younger, bolder,Till from man's turbid sleep be past
The shadow by his day-dreams cast,
And wrong in its foul embers smoulder,
Fused by the crescent Sun of right,
Climbing mankind from height to height.
XXIV.
Like cheery breeze-blest galleon, warmWith flusht farewells and valiant hails,
That smooth from festive moorings sails
Into a noyous night of storm,
And, shrieking, straining, leaping, brave,
Breasts the close lightning, blast and wave,
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XXV.
Was his quick launch into the world,A true, bold, willing man, whose will,
Affronted, baffled, wounded, still
Waxed braver in the shock, and, whirled
On the rude vortex, drew strong breath
To gird its ribs 'gainst inward death.
XXVI.
Unlike the ship, no rest had he.A stout man, with the will to steer,
Leaves never tempests in his rear:
They front him ever angrily.
Co-angered, he struck stronger through,
As wilder blacker storm-racks flew.
XXVII.
On life's mid-path he stood, unbent;But sad his eye was, and his brow
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Despised the past and challenge sent
To the future. Round his mouth were dates
Indented there by scorns and hates.
XXVIII.
Not one was he to flinch or falter:Nor eye of man nor frown of hell
Could for a trice his courage quell.
And yet, as with himself he 'd palter,
Or that his ruddiest heart-drops paled,
At times the spirit in him quailed.
XXIX.
Across clear onward thoughts would fall,—Like shower on festal cavalcade,
Or summons on a bridegroom laid,—
A rueful shadow's sudden pall,
That fixed his eye and blanched his lips,
And drenched him in malign eclipse.
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XXX.
With weird alarms even sleep was shook.Athwart the jointless dreams would crawl
A hideous hydra to appall
The bravest. Crouched, a dastard look
Glared from his wrinkled furtive eyes,
Greenish and circumfused with lies.
XXXI.
In a long, sinewy, jagged jawRevenge was toothed; cold avarice pined
Pale on his forehead, intertwined
With lurid hate; in a vast maw
Were crammed mixt crude things, of the best,
Which he could gulp, but not digest.
XXXII.
With such associate to dream onProved bravest nerve. But now 'gan loom
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Gigantesque the trembling Demon.
Then, weltered in cold sweat, he quaked,
And, shrieking, from his torture waked.—
XXXIII.
The moving shadow, worded night,Unto the day that made her cleaves,
And lives by food her master leaves,
Gathering what droppeth in his flight,
Whereon, through the veiled hours, she broods,
For good or ill, as be her moods.
XXXIV.
Only that form was haggard night's;Begotten on shy, helpless sleep
By wilful day, who bids her weep
Or laugh, according as he blights
Or blesses her lone hours. What stalks
In shade, first in the noontide walks.
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XXXV.
The strong man's strength was mastering will,Itself o'ermastered by the blood
Of lustful wants,—the feverish food
Of pampered life,—which when they fill
Th' imperial orbs of thought, usurp
A throne, and linkèd life discerp
XXXVI.
With bad contentions, endless, black,Splintering the wholesome man in two,
The social both and single, who,
Self-tortured, gasps upon the rack
Of thwartings, doubtings, plots, and dreads,
Like one who in armed darkness treads.
XXXVII.
Who is unruled by lustless wants,Knows not his rank, and basely creeps,—
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For harbor 'mong the heart's low haunts.
A crownless King is he, his state
Sad as were Eve's without her mate,
XXXVIII.
Woful as sunless planet reelingThrough thickened chaos,—or an ocean
Heaved in perpetual shade, its motion
Untuned by light,—or the pale feeling
At frantic lion's torrid roar,
Heard on far Iceland's arctic shore.
XXXIX.
And thus for him was night in day:The sunshine of the soul was quenched
By earth-clouds, and the reason wrenched
Its loyal path, the upward way.
The worst were not mute slumber's gleams,
But in loud noon the conscious dreams;
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XL.
Day-dreams about the night they makeIn the blank future's awe-hedged realm,—
Vague misshapes, horrible whims that whelm
The minds that breed them, which still take
Unholy joy in self-born fright,
Hugging with vague and stern delight
XLI.
Their terrible imaginations,The froward offspring, coarse and grim,
Of sultry passions that bedim
Their life,—lusts and indignations,
Wherewith they God endow, blaspheming
With their loose, selfish, dark day-dreaming.
XLII.
Now sways the ghostly infinite law,That the unseen rules the seen. Each hour
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From life's selectest blood, and draw
Poison from healthy juice, to kill
All generous, loving, kindly will.
XLIII.
So was his higher being curstBy mandates from the lower nature
Of ires, anxieties, each feature
Dark with a darkness inly nurst,
That in his steadfast face you spell
Prints grooved by thoughts of death and hell.
XLIV.
Death is a dream of unripe man,A carnal myth,—in being a schism
Impossible,—a cold egotism
Of crude self-busied brains, which plan,
That with the ceasing of a breath
Ceases God's law, which knows not death.—
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XLV.
The murkiest midnight feels the Sun:In total shade men could not breathe:
And when in ghastliest umbrage seethe
The passions,—like pale silver, spun
In the black earth, that unseen glows,—
Through dreariest bosom secret flows
XLVI.
A thread of lucent life, which chanceOr prosperous stroke of purpose bares;
Or, oftener still, spontaneous flares
An inward flame, that in the dance
Fresh leaps,—the grovelling dance of death,—
And the blind heart illumineth.
XLVII.
That is a resurrection-day,When through the crusted sensual clods
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Great smile—first greeted—shines away
The terrors, greeds, and spites that meet
Round the numb'd heart, its winding-sheet.
XLVIII.
O! the deep pious ecstasy,When, from the smaller self upflown,
We firmly sail on currents blown
Love-lifted towards humanity.
The far Heavens quit their frosty skies,
And stooping to us warm our eyes;
XLIX.
And touch the brain with holy calm,That all about we patent see
Divine impulsions working free
The prisoned world. With chastened palm
We handle commonest things, and bless
All ours with the new happiness.
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L.
One he had been who sent abroad—Horsed fleeter than the tempest's wind—
His myriad messengers of mind,
Sent far, even to the verge of fraud,
For homage, power, delight, and pelf,
To gild one petty home for self.
LI.
But now, as though fresh sap had shotA subtler tide into the brain,
Making it sparkle in a train
Of glib imaginings, all hot
With great desires, the strong man grew
Transformed to something mildly new.
LII.
Another sun rose on his face;And there—like unbowed prisoner, free
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The soul came out, and through the haze
Of ebbing darkness glistened glorious
In its own light, jubilant, victorious.
LIII.
New thoughts gave action wiser bent;New acts gave life so sweet a grace,
That men looked hopeful in his face,
And outcasts blest him as he went.
If higher joy can be, he proved,
Than loving, 't is to be beloved.
LIV.
For ripened use too late in himThese selfless pulses of the heart:
Spirit from flesh will quickly part:
The soul hies to a home less dim.
But not in anguish part the two.
Gentle regretful sighs came through,
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LV.
That freer verge he had not hereTo be his better self,—for earth
Rebuilding on a cleaner hearth
The life he had misbuilt,—and rear
A name that memory might hold,
And warmer grow in growing old.
LVI.
Soon melt even these unbodied sighs;For on his willing conscience roll
Such pageants of the radiant Whole,
The bounded earth-life from him flies
A speck. He feels himself to be
Parcel of vast Infinity.
LVII.
A freer pulse new thought upbears,More true than life, more wide than dreams;
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And earth, with its earthy wants and cares,
Lies suddenly remote, and cast
Behind him in the dusky past;
LVIII.
While he—like dawn seizing vast gloomsWith surges of its easy might—
Rides forward on majestic light,
Mindless of flesh-imagined dooms;
His calm clear spirit-staring eyes
Ranged far beyond the visual skies.—
LIX.
Again the routed gang remuster,—Minions of venomous desires,—
To sway him back to stealthy mires.
Only to singe their wings they cluster.
Himself his panoply, with arms
Of light he 's helmed 'gainst wily harms.
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LX.
Still unabashed, by power unvouched,Through laurelled hopes, through visions blest,
Vainly once more the old shades prest;
And at the last beside him crouched,
Like baffled buzzard on a bier,
Writhing, unmarkt, the Demon, Fear.
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