University of Virginia Library

Thou dull tree,
What and hast thou gained nothing? Not a twig,
A leaf, a flower, a colour? By my count
Thou shouldst have leafed and summered, seared and died
Since I sat down beside thee. Nay, if I
Had lifted up this head that thou dost shade,
To see thee branchless, thy dismantled trunk
Worm-wemmed in hollow age—I could have said
‘Why this is well, yes, thou and I, old friend,
Have filled our days.’

How goes the human year?
The first of a new month! I take my times
And seasons as a traveller in the night
Kneels by the stone beside the unknown way,
And gropes with patient finger the moss-grown
And mouldering miles; while at his trembling touch
Out of the ignorant strange dark comes forth
The old remembered name, and or the light
Of home, or the intolerable flash
That sends him scorched and moaning.

I remember
A year ago to-day I left my fields
To dwell in cities. How that black sad time
Frowns back to this. The first dark day it rained,
An inky rain blackening the civic shrubs
And birds apostate whom my heart knew not.
Between the door-sills flowed the narrow street,
Betwixt the house-tops crept as foul a mirk,
Soaking and cheerless, as if overhead
Another street, inverted in the air,
Let down an answering ooze; and I beheld
Nor felt it was not well; till suddenly
Upon the morrow eve the sun shone in,
The country sun—and I rose up in haste
And clasped my hands and cried ‘not here, not here
For pity!’ as she cries whom secret shame
Hath soiled, and puts away with passionate tears
The old familiar kisses. The third day
I went; but in those three days saw strange sights
And many, which men told me that the eyes
Which dwell there daily saw and did not weep.
I saw the palaces of thronèd Law
Where Law supreme in red and ermine sits,
And, like the fool's cap on the telescope
With his pert sheepskin shuts out sun and stars.
I saw the man-fruit on the gallows-tree,
It hung up like a fruit and like a fruit
Shook in the wind, like a fruit was plucked down
And the dark wintry branch stood bare. That day
I saw a withered woman in her rags
Watch by a door and snatch what lay within
And feed her young. I saw a stout arm seize
And hale her to a dungeon. The same hour
I saw a young man in the flush of youth
Broad in the sunshine of the city street,
Meet a poor soul that once had been a maid;
She knew that she was desolate, and he
Spat in her ruined face because he might.
I did not hear that he was hanged or chained.
And so the world went on. But was it thus
That in the Eye of Him who made the world
While it was yet unmade the thing to be
Did golden revolution, and appeared
So lovely that He made it? If this earth
Be but a Lazary, a madman's cell,
A gaol, a charnel, wherefore was it reared
So like a temple? Hath a den of thieves
The gates called ‘Beautiful?’ Or are these hills,
Whereon the consecrated Noon doth set
The golden candlestick, and robèd Eve
Shall light her late burnt-offering in the west,
The changers' tables? Yet ah, who shall say
‘My Father's House,’ and by that right divine
Dispose unblamed within? Whose sinless cords
Shall cleanse it? What sufficient touch of faith
Removing the great mountain that on high
Holds back the imminent Hyaline, unsluice
The second deluge? Where is he on earth,
At whose great word I, who sit here to-day
In her fair porch and royal gate of all
One sore from head to heel, should rise and walk?
And at what word that did not make me whole,
Would I, for all the beauty of my place,
Lift from the chaste chryselephantine floors
One leprous limb? Yet who shall dare to cast
A stone upon my sin, or with white hands
Hale me beyond the portals? Drugs there be
For every ill, and in their books the wise
Apportion each to each; but who shall bring
The living instance to the written saw?
For every sickness of a human soul
There may be balm in Gilead, but what eye
Infallible shall find, what lip shall name
My hid disease? To hell, ye empirics!
And burn your statutes.

Who shall legislate
For the unseen performance of the heart?
Or in the balance of his justice weigh
The imponderable soul? By what gross word
Of this her rude interpreter assess
Her necessary silence? By what work
Of menial senses judge her viewless hand,
Her secret enterprise, her unobeyed
Commandment; good in service turned to ill,
Or ill so carried that it looked like good?
What profiteth to draw your lines about
A haunted house, or hem a ghost with trench
And scarped epaulment? Canst thou chain the wind,
Or put material fetters upon thought
That bloweth where it listeth? Or debar
The Soul from her delight? Who shall keep watch
O'er the forbidden treasure, and attach
Her going out and coming in? Show me
The etherial captive naked in the sun,
Bound at thy chariot wheels; bend at thy will
Her free immortal limbs; pass, under seal,
The charter of her rights, repeal this sin,
Enact yon virtue, with a single groat
Endow a starved remembrance, confiscate
That in the past that I could tell thee of,
And I will hear! Aye, send thy Sheriff, King,
Into this bosom; apprehend this pang;
Touch Me or these; arrest that bloody knife
Wherewith I quiver; standing by my side
Thrust in thine arm if thou art man, oh King!
And stay these burning hands that day and night
Are felon here!

‘King!’ Aye, that word crowns all!
Where is our King? If there be some man built
For each due office, and no man alive
But in his place is matchless, where is he
The head and master workman to dispose
Tasks fit for all, and each to his fit task?
For we are the disordered elements
Of that tremendous engine which, compact,
Should put a soul into this floating earth
And drive her thro' the stars; make headlong way
Dead in the wind of chance and all the tides
Of fortune, laugh to scorn the storms of fate,
Make white the deeps of chaos, and, at last,
Cast her eternal anchor on the shore
Of far applauding Heaven.

But now unplaced,
Constrict in bonds inordinate, or ties
With hopeless lesion lax, in unexplained
Society consorted to no end,
Or from connexion apt or impotent
Absolved and separate, dissolute, poured down
In orderly disorder, quick or dead,
Inert or vital, as the several part
Motive or to be moved fulfills in vain
Its own peculiar, fruitful now no more
In general welfare and the good of all—
We lie on heap, and each constituent finds
Disastrous sloth or detrimental use;
Dead in himself, or motionless as dead
Oppressed beneath his fellows, or, uplift
By wilful hand of hapless circumstance
And so applied, in sad unequal case
With unadapted organs ill performs
Unsuited functions, fine with gross, and gross
With fine. If One Infallible might speak
And make these dry bones live! If any sign
Could daily end this dire perplexity!
We are the sons of anguish; we are born
In labour and to labour; toil and pain
Begin us, and shall end us. It is well.
We are your slaves, work your high pleasure on us!
Aye, load us till we crack, and our great wills
Shall not be less than yours! None of these things
Move us, for none of these things our proud hearts
Arraign or shall arraign you, O ye gods!
We are no rebels; this our loud demand
Is not the ill blooded and morose complaint
Of secret hate, or the promulgèd war
Of overt treason, but a claim of right
Preferred by lips still loyal in the phrase
Of sweet subjection, the ensheathed appeal
Of armed allegiance, the obtesting cry
Of a forgotten people. Ye are gods,
And we are men; so let it be. But ye
Speak not our language nor we yours. If one
Might rede aright to us your dark decrees,
Whereof we pay infraction with the blood
Of ignorance! If any daily voice,
Were it no larger than this grasshopper's,
In our own tongue could only say to us
‘Well done, well done, thy feet are in the way,
This path beyond the darkness is the same;
Thou hast not walked in dreams, nor in thy sleep
Hath any passing mischief carried thee
Far from the roads of morning! Nought is lost.
That which thou sawest thou sawest, what thine ear
Heard hath been spoken; thou art not yet false;
This that thou callest good is good: go on,
It shall be well with thee in all the worlds!’
But now am I as one blindfold and bound,
Who, 'mid a sounding pageant, pressed and thronged
With tramp of steeds and shout of changed event,
Roar of innumerable multitude,
And banners' proud advance and clang of horns
Dying the gaudy air with hot acclaim,
And flux and reflux of resistless tide,
Doth take from side to side with helpless face
Blind buffet of the surging turbulence
And strong bewilderment, and feels his blood
Down-dropping, and his wounds; but heedeth more
The wonder of his heart, and moans and moans,
‘Alas that I could see!’

‘I?’ who am I?
Whence? How? Why? Whither?

This old world that stands
Before me day and night, what? wherefore?

Down
Thou pompous and intolerable ruin!
I weary of thee! Thou art out of knowledge;
Thy centuries untold; thy Builders where?
Thy fashion lost; thy substance without name;
The very need that thou didst satisfy
Forgot. Why cumberest thou the fields of air,
Incantada?

The cardinal intent,
The regnant virtue, final element,
And master good, the better truth of all,
Which on its ordered arms upbears these shows
As leaves upon a tree; that which beheld
Infers the necessary universe
As substance shadow; and, being known indeed,
Is the old fruit which, eaten, maketh gods,
Who shall discover and therein first find
Himself and all his race? There is some truth
Unknown, whose very footsteps are more bright
Than any visible face, and on whose track
Unlooked for the glad heart in loud surprise
Doth open like a hound. Sometimes I pass
Plain after plain of many-trodden life,
And never cross it; and anon when Hope
Grown careless hath unleashed his pursuivants
And all the long invariable way
Stretches in lifeless waste—my dazzled eyes
And the long trail of light! This panting heart
Racing pursuit where as she runs the run
Gives strength to run and warm and warmer air
Leads on the nose of capture, mad to win
O'ertakes the brightening leagues; then all at fault
Stands fixed and bays the sky. As one should trace
An angel to the hill wherefrom he rose
To Heaven, and on whose top the vacant steps
In march progressive with no backward print
A-sudden cease. Sometimes, being swift, I meet
His falling mantle torn off in the wind
Of great ascent, whereof the attalic pomp
Between mine eyes and him perchance conceals
The bare celestial. Whose still happier speed
Shall look up to him while the blinding toy
In far perspective is but as a plume
Dropped from the eagle? Whose talarian feet
Shall stand unshod before him while he spreads
His pinions? Who shall take him by the hand?
I have tried all Philosophies; I know
The height and depth of science; I have dug
The embalmèd Truth of Karnak and have sailed
Tigris and Ganges to the sacred source
Of eastern wisdom; I have lived a life
Of noble means to noble ends; and here
I turn to the four winds, and say ‘In vain,
In vain, in vain, in vain!’

The end is come.
I stand upon the Babel I have built,
I have surpassed the mountains, the great globe
Lies inexhaustible below, my days
Are still before me; these unconquered limbs
Invulnerable hang by my strong side
Brawny with toil; but I have worked my last.
I cannot lift these arms. I have attained
The furthest realm aërial where the air
Is gross enough to breathe, and Nature's self
Refuses to o'erbuild the vital bound
And lift me into death. I lay me down
Upon my life-long work the wretchedest man
That ever fought and lost. What I have done,
No more being done, is vain, and more being done
Unsouls the bulk that went before, and rears
A pyramid to hold into the sun
The offence of my mortality. My pride
Hath climbed till I can hardly see the earth
Beneath me, and from that last possible height
Looks up with fainting eyeballs to behold
A heaven no whit more near. Is there no help?

O Thou Invisible, whoe'er thou art,
Who with sufficient presence and plenary touch
Extensive, whether in the unfathomed east
And west or in the terrible extremes
Beyond the Pole Star and the Southern Cross
They mark the immeasurable round of heaven,
At once distendest with co-equal life
The order'd spheres; either withdraw thyself
From the serene and golden harmony
Of that inspirèd matter overhead
Which circleth irrespective day and night
In heedless welfare; either give up realms
That once were Chaos to the mortal shock
Of the last anarchy; let maddened day
Scorch hope to ashes, and the flaming night
Affright us till the yell of our despair
Rise in the howling regions; be exhaled
O Power, let me behold the sudden stars
Meet in omnipotent havoc that results
To utter space and ebbs and flows and ebbs
In vast conflux and infinite recoil
Systole and diastole, till lo!
A universe that like our mortal lot
Panteth to death, and in the hopeless sight
We leap to final flames; or now at last
Unveil Thyself and save us! Come forth strong
To judgment! Justify the shows of things,
And heal her and this world!