University of Virginia Library

Whence come these dark misgivings—this strange dread—
These sudden chills, and creepings of a fear
I never felt till now; as though the heavens
Were muttering silent thunders o'er my head,
Too black to meet the eye of God; too deep
For heaven, with all its stars, to hear and live?
Has the great evil woven round my soul
A spell of Pandemonium, and a shroud
Framed of the glooms and horrors that surround
His gleaming palace-home, like smoke round fire,
That I should feel thus namelessly immersed,
Baptised in horrent shadows and dim dreads?
Why do I feel so lonely in the world?
Is the great charnel tenantless, and I
The one sole living thing amid its bones,
Its faded velvets, and its rotten biers?

My riven soul is like a world destroyed,
Filled with still smoking craters, lava-washed,
Strewn o'er with sand, all smoke-imbrown'd and burnt,
With bright fire-splinters lighting up the waste.
My very light is darkness; and my hopes
All turn'd to ashes of a fire extinct;
And joys descend upon me, like snow-flakes
Upon a sable robe—soon melting off,
Bright but by contrast—leaving spots behind!

My heart hath shed its pleasures, like a horse
Its midnight rider, that still plungeth on,
Champing the darkness through the narrow lanes,
Thick set with thorns: on, on unto a land
Of hungry pitfalls, and all-gulphing night.

Flora! my Flora! Oh that thou wert here
To pillow my sad head upon thy breast;
And with its heavings shake my achings off.
For thou wouldst be to me as light from Heaven
Shining through dungeon-grates on living eyes;
Wouldst melt the ice about my heart, like Spring,
And let the flowers all flush up into life;
Wouldst trample on the glooms around my soul,
Like daylight upon darkness; and the prints
Of thy sweet feet would be like stars at night,
Or like bright primroses on sun-burnt banks;
Thy voice would hush the clamours of my soul,
Turning them all to music; and thine eyes,
With all their meek love-glances, would infuse
A holy light into my life, like that
Which shakes the darkness from the chisell'd forms
In burial vaults, and shows the prayer-clasp'd hands,
The patient attitude and upturn'd eye.
O wert thou with me, I might yet be blessed!
My heart would then be all rimmed round with light.
Thy love would hang upon it, like the moon
On heaven's dark concave through a Winter's night;
And I should go on singing through the world,
Like mountain streams in June, all laughingly,
And rippled o'er with dimples; and my life
Would be like bees in sultry Summer time,
Brown-barred, but rich and rough with jagged gold.

But as it is, I feel too much alone.
My life is but a phantom-dream, and I
Am nothing but a shadow among things,
Gliding through Time,—a Night without a star.
For I have been a worshipper of thought,
Until thoughts are my only store of wealth,—
Mere scintillations, like the Northern lights,
Bright without warmth, leaving no after-prints,
Like mighty deeds, whose vestiges remain
When they are not. Therefore this discontent,
This yearning want, this wide vacuity.

All things reproach, and all admonish me.
The outer world is real; but that within
Is—nay, I am wearied out with saying what!
We stretch our arms, and clasp an empty void;
We search for truth, and lo! the infinite;
We seek the soul of beauty, and behold
A skull! We question all things of the life
That is within them:—they return blank stares.
Perpetual seekers, but without success,
We dive down into the inane profound,
Groping for that we never, never touch;
While merry nature laughs us in the face,
And with her every smile repeats, “Thou fool!”

Oh! I have flung me at a mountain's foot
In the still moonlight, and have wept aloud
At my own littleness and vanity.
“Thou a philosopher, forsooth!” I said,
“What hast thou found in that dim world of thine,
Aught half so true and stable as this hill?”
And there it stood, lifting its jagged peak
Proudly aloft into the azure dark,
Fronting the universe, and welcoming,
With rugged bluffness, the coquettish light
That danced with child-like glee about its head,
Folding its robe of pines around its breast—
A stately, proud, strong something in the world,
And not like me, a poor, soul-sicklied thought!

And I have gone out in the winter's storms,
And felt the winds all smite me in the face,
And writhed beneath the buffetings of hail,
And heard the creaking branches of the trees
Groan out their “Shame!” upon me as I pass'd,
And gone home, like an idler, to his meal.
And I have met the Summer, fill'd with shame,
Have seen her fling her bright, transparent robe—
Her woof of sunbeams o'er the ruddy West,
And gather round her her grand veil of stars;
Have seen her, when she first awoke at morn,
Marshal her pageantry around her steps,
And come upon the semi-sleeping world
Chanting loud pœans unto God on high,
With sad heart-shudders, and with self-reproach.
And I have seen the Spring come slanting up,
Looking askance, half veiling her sweet face,
Like pouting beauties frowning on their charms;
As if she feared her beaming looks would blind
And madden half the shivering world, if she
Came up from her bright realm too suddenly;
Have seen her nimble fingers spin the leaves
That were to mantle half the happy year
In greenery; and watched her as she went
Smiling upon her little family
Of early flowers, with thoughts that were akin
To anguish—till she wrapped her garments round,
And, with a smile, went off into the blue;
Leaving the Summer to complete the task,
The handicraft of love she had begun.

And I have seen the long-loved Autumn come
Red-faced and jovial o'er the waving corn;
Have seen the orchards bend beneath his wealth,
And ancient barns look pursy with their stores,
Have seen him with remorse, and heard him say
“Where are thy treasures, friend? Hast aught to show?
Is the world better for thy being? Come!
Empty thy pockets—fling thy apples out!”
And gone off, saying to myself,
“My garden is a worthless waste as yet,
Growing but two things only—namely weeds,
And sickly plants that never yet have flower'd.”

I am disgusted both with my pursuits
And with myself. What have I done for any living thing
That I should still live on among the rest,
And draw up nourishment from all around
Yielding no increase—not a fruit or flower,
Or brightening presage, or young, round soul-bud
As promises of growing after-wealth,
But sad and uttermost sterility.
'Tis true that I have thought. But to what end?
I have been plunging in the depths of being,
Seeking for knowledge that I never found,
While the sweet upper world has been at work,
Each doing, and each suffering for the whole.

All things have been enigmas unto me,
And I have spent my soul in their solution;
Leaving them all but unsolved riddles still;—
Have gone into the outer world of thought,
And come back empty-handed, like the rest,
Bearing an unwise blank upon my face—
A look of wonder at the universe—
And the young streams have laugh'd at me in sport,
And gone on prattling their sweet Summer talk,
Saying unto me, “Dreamer! make a song.
Thou wilt not work. Do something. Thou canst sing.
Strike us a note or two from those long strings
Of under-harmony thou must have touched,
And tell us why the world is as it is;
Or give us a slight hint about the soul.
Thou art a player in the universe:
Give us thy part, for thou hast studied it.
The world is but a drama, full of acts;
We are but actors in the ‘make up’ scenes;
While thou—friend—thou hast stood on the stage-front,
And hadst the noblest passages to speak;
But this thou didst disdain: for thy great soul
Could never brook to act another's thought
Unquestion'd,—though that other was thy God!
But thou—of course—must needs be critic too.
Well, friend! What of the plot? What of the plot?
Is it ‘all true to nature,’—and so forth?
Thou canst not have been idle all this time,—
Thou surely hast a word to say—speak out!”

Thus all things banter me; and my own heart
Adds venom to the sting. For all my days
Have gone like dreamless sleeps—deep questionings,
Whose answers were but questions deeper still.

Thus hath all been a bootless want of faith,
A querulous negation in the world,
And “Question” is the upshot of it all.
Grand consummation this of all my hopes!
Most glorious product of a life of toil!
An empty vat refuseth to be filled,
Because, forsooth, it knows not why it should!
A stubborn harpstring will not yield a sound,
Though its own maker's finger striketh it;
Because—oh! I could laugh in bitterness—
It knows not all the laws of harmony!
The finite finds it cannot comprehend
The infinite—and grumbles doleful things!

Oh! I have play'd the fool unto myself;
Have tried in vain to clutch the burning stars,
And left the fruit to rot within my grasp;
Have said unto the measureless, “My friend!”
And left my true friend knocking at the door;
Have striven after the impossible,
And left the bright, imperishable gem
To gather darkness underneath my feet.
Fool! Fool that I have been! Vain empty fool!
Believing nothing that I could not grasp,
Calling all false, I could not understand,
Seeking the inner laws that bind all things,
And treating with contempt the things themselves
Staring adown the vistas of the soul
In hope of seeing truth, and gazing up
With most impotent eye and feeble mind
The infinite expanse to find out God,
While He, in act of friendship, laid His hand
Upon my arm, until I shook him off.
The truth that came to me unsought I spurned:
I valued nothing that I did not seek,
And never found the thing that I had sought.
The soul can ask what it can never solve;
And I vext mine with problems out of reach—
The Source of Being and Eternity,
Man, God, the Universe, the Infinite,
The soul of Good and Evil, and their Laws,
And the relations of the One to All,
And of the All to One, and the deep cause
From which this net-work of relations sprang,
And all the mighty web of influence
Which God is ever weaving round the world,
Where suns make out the pattern, and where stars
Flame out in bright relief. These were my themes.
And, like an idiot weeping for the moon,
I went off wailing that I wanted more,
Immeasurably more than I could have.
The bird was dumb, because it could not drown
The rattling thunder with its evening song;
And the bright butterfly refused to spread
The velvet splendour of its plumes, because
It could not put the sun out with its wings.
And when at length I roused me from my dream,
And walked out in the woods for solacement,
The very winds laughed at me; and the flowers
Smiled up a keen rebuke, for they had grown
Beneath the hand of God, and spurn'd it not;
Had filled the measure of their being up
And asked not Wherefore they should shoot and bud:
And everything within the landscape seem'd
A glittering reproach; for they all lived
As they were pre-ordained, and questioned not—
Breathing expositors of their God's will.
They had not crossed His purposes like me.
They had not quarrelled with themselves, and with
Their Maker, and the universe, because
It was too vast to play at hide and seek,
And would not yield its secret up to them.
And I crept through them, like a guilty spy,
Who had done nothing in the world but peep,
And had seen nothing to reward the act.
The very grass I trod beneath my feet
Seem'd conscious of my presence; and the woods,
With all their thousand voices seem'd to mock
And to contemn my vain, o'er-bloated pride,
Asking me, ‘Hast thou quite exhausted truth,
And scanned the secrets of the infinite,
And scooped the immeasurable waters out,
Laying their beds bare with thy cockle-shell?
And are the purposes of God exposed,
Hence and for evermore to curious eyes;
And all the mysteries of the world explained;
And life become the merest daily drudge
Stripp'd of its dark-sublime relationships?
Hast thou found out the secret walks of God,
And trodden down the plants of His own rearing,
And flung the gate wide open, so that all
May see Him busy at His endless task,
Creating, guarding, and ordaining all?’
Until I fled from Nature as from Doom,
And plung'd into the vortex of the towns,
Hoping to drown the voice of self-reproach
Amid the jar of battling interests;
And drawn a veil of smoke between myself
And the all-conscious glance of star-eyed heaven:
Saying unto my soul—‘Here I shall find
Shams like myself—men who have thrown away
Huge fragments of their life in vain pursuits,
And found themselves the poorer for their toil,
And flung the dice of life up in disgust.’
But no! I found all eagerly at work,
And though my motives had been high as heaven,
And theirs were sordid as a miser's hoards,
Yet they had bravely won while I had lost.
They had gone down into the field of Time,
And come off conquerors, while I was foiled.
They had been workers, and the universe
Was grateful to them as it is for stars.

Philosophy! Philosophy! Deep fool!
Thou most profound of all inanities!
Great bankrupt! Soul-deluding fiend! Ah why
Hast thou thus robb'd me of my early years,
Fringing the pathway of despair with flowers,
Strewing thy hollow reeds across the gulph,
Robing Corruption in a cloth of gold,
And painting the pale cheeks of pain with bloom?
Why didst thou conjure up thy phantom forms,
Thy false, and fair appearances of truth,
Thy bright enchanted scenes of loveliness,
Wrapping me in an atmosphere of light,
But to delude me with thy hollow vaunts;
And then, when I had come to worship thee,
Veil thyself o'er in shadows, and depart,
Leaving me on a narrow neck of land—
The black and roaring waters at my feet,
And the eternal thunders o'er my head;—
The puppet of the monetary stars,
The butt of nature, and the fool of time,
That sapient idiot—a philosopher!

Thus has it ever been with all who thought,—
With those who strove to battle with the soul,
And wring from it the secret talisman
That should unfold to view the under-world
Of causes, and occult relationships;
And show things as they are within themselves,
And not as they appear to vulgar eyes.
All earnest spirits have gone down to death
With a terrific curse upon their lips,
An imprecation on thy broken vows,
Thou mist-brow'd Sophist! thou expiring lie!
Thine humbler sister, Science, hath advanced,
While thou hast dwindled with the march of moons.
The socket is approach'd, and thou art doom'd
To flicker thy pale light a moment more
Dimly enough! and then die out in smoke!
Hast thou not cheated all, from Thales, and
Anaximander, Anaximenes,
And (legend-clouded name) Pythagoras,
Down to the latest speculator's dream,
In that great land of dreamers—Germany?
Is not thy mighty roll of names a cheat—
A miserable record of the pranks
A certain pale flame play'd upon a marsh,
Where all the mighty of the earth were swamp'd?
Are not the great names of thy progeny
Mournful as dates upon a coffin lid?
Most mighty ships, but stranded into wrecks;
Bright hopes, but dissipated like the mists;
Sweet dreams, but gone like last year's midnight tolls,
Pass'd off into the breath of bygone winds;
Thy Plato, Zeno, and thy Socrates,
Thy sceptics, cynics, sophists, and the hosts
Of sects that parcell'd out the ancient world,
What were they but gigantic arms outstretch'd
To clasp a melting cloud—a puff of air?
Those lofty ones that panted for the truth,
And question'd all things, waiting in a hush
For those responses which were never heard,
Gazing with earnest eyes towards thy fanes
For aboriginal and primal facts,
And all the raw materials out of which
The texture of the universe was spun;
Not satisfied with picking up loose pearls,
Which Science threadeth on her lengthening string;
But plunging into the remorseless sea,
And groping in her halls for hoards at once,
Asking of all her echoless profound,
How they were fashion'd forth, and whence they came.
Alas! they found the soul broad as a Sun
In questionings; but puny in result.
High spiring pinnacles glance up at heaven,
With narrow dormitories fit for dolls,
A palace guesteth nothing but a mouse,
And one poor minnow wags his tail alone,
In a wide-spreading lake, that might reveal
The huge proportions of the rounded hills,
And bosom night herself with all her stars!
They found that we are so enwrapp'd in self,
That the whole world is but its duplicate;
That the soul seeth nothing but the soul,
And that things are to it but what they seem;
That we know nothing of the outer world
But what the inner world enstamps
With her own seal, and moulds unto herself;
That the eye seeth just what fits the eye;
That the mind knoweth just what fits the mind;
That the soul flings her image on the rim
And outer edge of all things, and looks out
Through her sense-windows on herself—no more!
The world is what she makes it to herself,
Something, or nothing, as the whim may be;
That certitude is unattainable,
And self is the beginning and the end,
The Alpha, and Omega, and the all.
The right hand clasps the left—and all is done;
And outer things are shadows but of this!

No sight so sad on all the sands of time
As the deep footprints of these mighty ones,
All tending to one point, through varying paths,
Led on by thee, most false Philosophy,
Huge-promising, and non-performing fiend!
For they all wander'd in their lofty quest
Till their foot dangled over the abyss,
And the upheaving gulph was full in view,
While that they had pursued went floating o'er,
Like Summer vapour, to the other side,
And the eternal stars look'd calmly on,
Inviting them to cross the roaring deep
And eat the fruits of knowledge in their midst,
For they had come up face to face with death,
And saw that only he possess'd the keys
Of highest knowledge, of truth absolute;
That he could loose the trammels of the soul—
He only—that to him alone was given
The power to break the mud-crust of their cell,
And let them soar and sing for evermore!
They saw this and acknowledged it. And he
Smiled on them, calling them his “dearest friends,”
And laid his white hand on their bending heads,
Giving them all his blessing. Wherefore they,
And all who follow them, return again
Unto the laughing upper-world, pale-brow'd,
And circled in a misty atmosphere,
With deep eyes looking into distant night—
Children of death, and bearing on their face
The impress of his pale, transparent hand!