University of Virginia Library

THE DOUBTER.

A stretch of low shore, on which the ocean breaks with large noisy waves. A man and woman stand here. They clasp each other's hands. Both faces are filled with agony. The man speaks.

Love, your hair loosens, the winds have their will with it,
Half its warm affluent amber dishevelling;
Now they uplift it and now they lie still with it,
Salt from the sea on whose deeps they are revelling.
Stand with me, sweet, while the wave topples thunderous,
While the dim gull dares the morning's immensity,
O'er us the sky's blue infinitude, under us
Reaches of swart shore and rocks in dark density.
Here we clasp hands with pale faces and pleasureless,
We with no heart for the light lapsing glorious
On till it dies among distances measureless,
On till it bathes among billows uproarious.
Earth in her absolute happiness heeds us not,
Turned like some haughty implacable heart from us;
Proud with supreme pride, she knows us not, needs us not,
Laughs and is lovely aloof and apart from us.
Grief, like the scriptural angel imperial,
Points with stern finger the path for our feet to tread;
Seen far away, rosy-robed and ethereal,
Love treads with weeping the ways we found sweet to tread.
Oh the lost future, the doom dictatorial,
Dark with its curse of unchangeable severance!
Ah, the fair past, the flown moments memorial,
Shrine where the sad thought pays passionate reverence!
Fleetly indeed fades the joy life may hold for us,
Brief is our breath ere the end shall annihilate.
How can we guess what the future may hold for us,
Draped with a darkness no vision may violate?
Starless, opaque, irresponsive, inscrutable,
Who hath had eyes that might pierce the hard mystery?
Who of the prophets, the many, the mutable,
Crowding with creeds the long highways of history.
This we have learned after questioning querulous,
This we have learned after longing importunate:
Life, whether painful or caseful or perilous,
Closes in death, whether woful or fortunate.
Not though the body and spirit both bleed for it,
More shall we learn while the centuries glide from us;
Not though in awful ineffable need for it,
Praying we fling the last fragment of pride from us!
Wherefore I say if a man hath loved urgently,
Given all his heart for a woman's dear pleasurement,
(Just as a wave with white worship insurgently
Rushes to mantle some crag's mighty measurement,)
How shall he tamely see fate in her dominance
Tear from his keeping what kings could not buy from it?
See hope drop down, as in flame-shrouded prominence
Drops the doomed ship when the frighted throngs fly from it?
You that are fair as a flower-stem is frangible,
Chaster than dawns with no shadow of night in them,
Filled with all graces intense though intangible,
Having the eyes with the deep dreamy light in them!
More do I need you, my pure-browed, my beautiful,
Than the star needs the blue fathoms it burns within,
More than the grove its bird-vassalage dutiful,
Or the mossed mill-wheel the stream that it turns within!
All things earth shows me, through years yet unborn for me,
Lovely or lordly, in lineaments numberless,
Though they still wear the old charm they have worn for me,
Yet shall wake yearning, unquenchable, slumberless.
Opulent pastures, or sun-fall's cloud-palaces
Clear purple mountains or meadowlands flowerful,
Riot of roses or chaste lily-chalices,
Each will bear sign of you, sacred and powerful.
Never an evening shall shape in the west of it
Any frail crescent's new silver fragility,
Never a sea-wave shall wreathe on the crest of it
Any full moonbeam's quick pale instability,
But, O my sweet, in the delicate thrall of these,
Luring my spirit's allegiance and loyalty,
Linked by mysterious kinship to all of these,
You shall still reign with unwavering royalty!
Ah, could I trust that these farewells for each of us
Meant at the end but a fleet earthly vanishment,
That an eternal delight were in reach of us,
Having flung down our dull burdens of banishment,
Then, though time smote me with savage hostilities,
How I would stand hardy-fronted and towerlike!
Then, with a smile at all fate's possibilities,
How I would wear my worst agony flowerlike! ...
Still, O believers, if Christ could come down to you,
Come from the cross where they nailed him, disdaining him,
Come bloody-browed from the terrible crown to you,
Come with the insolent spear-wound yet staining him,
Half would desert his meek godhead denyingly,
Spurned like the corpse by the conqueror's chariot,
Half would forsake him, as lightly, as lyingly,
As the low soul of his own dead Iscariot!
Seen as an image illusive and vapory,
Clad by the ages with blurring obscurity,
Reared statuesque o'er some altar's dark drapery,
Love ye to praise your white Christ in his purity!
This is not he that wrought bounty from slenderness,
Fed the large glad throng, while greater and lesser eat;
This is not he that with voice full of tenderness
Called unto Peter at morn by Gennesaret!
This is no god that if raimented meagrely
Yet with meek love like a raiment enfolding him,
They that now worship would turn upon eagerly,
Turn with fond hearts that leapt high at beholding him.
Nay, they would let the rough rains work their worst on him,
Let the snows freeze him, the mountain pass swallow him,
Leave the hot hate of the lightning to burst on him,
Ere they would dare to rise up and to follow him!
Ah, were he stripped of the riches they gird him with,
Few then would serve him in silent humility,
Changed from the old haughty gods they would herd him with,
Loving heaped altars and pompous docility!
Oh, he is well, and his worship might never end
While upon rich easy cushions they kneel to him,
Daintily godlike, conveniently reverend,
Where the bland Pharisee legions appeal to him!
Say that the north wind the tender grass nourishes,
Say that youth's hues are of all things the lividest,
Say of the rose that on frost-blight she flourishes,
Say of the star that by noon she is vividest,
Say that all lives wear a touch of nobility,
Say that the oak may not crush the anemone,
But call not this god of mere church-gentility
Him that sweat blood in the glooms of Gethsemane!
[OMITTED]
Look, the free sea, how it leaps on its sands to us,
Strong with a strength that no woes may emaciate,
Waving afar its pale splendors of hands to us,
Laughing with lips that no laughter may satiate.
Watch how the long surge goes wandering seeker-like,
Reared of this sea, the old arrogant leveller;
Mark how the day seems to drink of it beaker-like,
Drink and be glad, as an infinite reveller.
Beautiful wild-throated sea, you are pitiless,
Proud in the power that we watch who are powerless,
Glad, though all earth should lie plundered and citiless,
So you still break on your bleak shores and flowerless.
Sea, being free, being glad from the birth of you,
How shall we make our supreme despair known to you,
Hearing the old immemorial mirth of you,
Though in our greatness of anguish we moan to you?
Careless that sorrow should master and capture us,
Roll your broad luminous waters resiliently;
Ah, for one tithe of the liberty rapturous
Born in their amplitudes, arching so brilliantly!
Here by the sand where your billow breaks thunderful,
Fair as when first the old mighty Greek sang of it,
We, by your stately delights and your wonderful,
Take a last parting, with sobs at the pang of it!