University of Virginia Library

God in His lonely Being, God in His awful might,
Hungered at last for fleeing out of excessive Light.
Sole with His solemn greatness high above joy and grief,
Grim in august sedateness, weary He wished relief.
Cold was the bliss that entered none but His boundless Life,
Dreadful when all Self-centred, stirred not by any strife.
Terrible grew the prison made by His perfect lot,
Where not a cloud had risen yet nor one splendid spot.
Vain seemed the endless ages, turning alone for Him
Still the unblotted pages never a tear could dim.
There by His own election sealed in a sacred calm
Shutting out less affection, sadly He sought a balm.
Gaunt was that dread privation touched by no tempest rude,
Ghastly the condemnation dooming to solitude;
Starving amid the glory binding Him captive in,
Hearing the eternal story pure from it's fellow sin,
Darkly He drew the fulness round His unruffled Heart
Walled though Divine with dulness, dwelling in peace apart.
Horrible grew the brightness shared not nor shadowed yet,
Robing His one uprightness round with a sun unset;
Cursed was the lot and fateful—but to be so employed,
Crushing Him down and hateful all because unalloyed.
Therefore He oped the portal letting His grandeur out,
Making the creature mortal wrapt with His Life about;
Tired of the ages endless, calm that no ripple broke,
He from His summits friendless thus in the silence spoke:

“It is a burden I can hardly bear,
A crown My Head is weary now to wear,
Which never from a set beginning rose
And never may find refuge in a close,
Though centuries on centuries roll by—
This dreadful boon of all Eternity.
No time existed, when I was not still
The same One God with one same iron will
Supreme, resistless, in unchanging might
And loneness of intolerable Light,
At once My dungeon and My glorious dress
Of bliss profound and beauty merciless,
Augustly perfect and serenely sole
The Life of life and yet Myself the Whole.
From everlasting I was just the same,
Incomprehensible, the fount and frame
Of all alike, the Last as well as First
Self-centred and sufficient with no thirst
From lack of any good, above the need
That wreaks itself in poetries of deed,
Beyond the pulse of passion in My store
Of absolute abundance, never more
Endowed than I could ask for, never less,
In awful joy of uncompanionedness.
This is My trouble, that I cannot cease
From happiness and unabated peace
Without a bar or pause or petty cloud,
In the great shining Home that is My shroud;
I fret against the tyranny of years
So fruitful with no equipoise of fears,
No background and no shadow and no sky
To break the prison of Eternity.
The overflowing cup, the boundless range
Of rest and gladness with no chime of change,
Oppress Me in My solitary throne
With the fixed measure of their monotone;
I am a burden to Myself, though bright
And beautiful is all in sound and sight,
Yet incomplete in its completeness orbed
Which has each gift and every grace absorbed,
And turned to bondage from the sheer excess
Of joy and peace and perfect holiness;
And, from this dreary plenitude of Power,
I crave for want within My fearful dower.
The need of nothing is the sorest need
To One who is the blossom and the seed
Of universal Being, and at call
Has whatsoe'er He seeks since He is All,
And cannot gain what He does not possess
In the broad circle of that Blessedness
Where æons are the only hours that strike,
The Centre and Circumference alike
Of the grand Sum, the Fountainhead and stream
The Light of light, the Dreamer and the dream.
Beneath the weight and wonder of the joy
That has no limit and no kind alloy,
I pine for mortal change, if but a breath,
And the sweet mercy of a moment's death.
But yet I must pursue the pathway trod,
For I may nowise other be than God
Or step outside Myself; for if I did
What My own law and destiny forbid,
And should exceed the uttermost dim bond
That binds Me in, it were Myself beyond;
And this My glory also is My curse,
I am the Slave of My own universe
Who must for ever and for ever be
Author and outcome both, and cannot flee
From any part or lot that is not Mine,
Enchained in this imprisonment Divine.
I am resolved to put forth fresher bloom
And make of Mine some new adaptive doom
With fair creations in an ordered sphere,
Where man and leaf shall flourish and turn sere
By generations' gradual rise and fall,
And birth succeeded by the solemn pall,
With kind relief for every soul at length,
In intermissions of surcease and strength;
That in their languors of allotted sleep
I too may drink the cup of poppies deep,
And reap in breaking of each human tie
A reflex rest, though God can never die.”

God in His glorious prison shadowless, where no shape
Mortal had yet arisen, hungered for some escape.
Then on the unseen forges, moulding His mighty plan
Hidden in mountain gorges, God to create began;
Took of His own great Being beautiful, pure and white,
Touched it with inward seeing wonderful, infinite;
Rifled His own sweet Bosom even of perfect joy,
Mingled the noontide blossom then with the night's alloy;
Gave with a father's blessing bright as the spring's young morn
Other and sharp caressing felt in the flower-hid thorn;
Mixed with the love for leaven sorrow to work as ban,
Fear but with hope as heaven, making His fellow man.
God from His weary splendour high on the mountain cup,
Bade by His Self-surrender image of Him start up;
Clothed him with His own thunder garb, while the sacred fire
Leapt at His Will and under kindled divine desire;
Fashioned him fair with beauty hugging the beast as foil,
Sowed in him seed of duty blooming in blessed toil;
Formed in His likeness kneading godhead and earthly dust,
Building him broad and leading on through ascents of trust;
Poured in his every motion's music a kingly grace,
Crowning him with devotion's dew on the upturned face;
Added to His dear creature all the Immortal can,
Passion and angel feature, making His plaything man.
God in His changeless bounding breathed in His scapegoat breath,
Fenced in by frail surrounding rich with the dower of death;
Set him on earth as victim decked with the roses' chains,
Chosen but to afflict him thus with vicarious pains:
Turned him adrift and loaded still with a mortal freight
Weakness to ruin goaded, easing His own sad weight;
Tempted him mocked with blindness set in his very law;
Scourged but in helpful kindness till he in suffering saw:
Starved him when madly driven out from a plenteous place,
Stayed him in deserts riven sore with exceeding Grace;
Framed him through stormy trials meant as His winnowing fan
Stronger by stern denials, making His servant man.
God in eternal soleness seeking a salve and kin,
Out of His awful wholeness shuddering looked on Sin;
Gazed on the evil shadow dogging His tool and toy,
Blight on the greenest meadow, blot in the gentlest joy;
Bathed in the lava glowing flesh He had softly knit,
Turned to the tempest blowing nerves that were all unfit;
Hedged the poor lot with thistles, fed it on stones for bread,
Harrowed with iron bristles life like a silken thread;
Scattered in Love the sorrow He never yet might share,
Though He would gladly borrow ills that His creature bare;
While He bestowed the resting change and a mortal plan
Grudged for His own investing—making His failure man.

“Lo, it is done, and yet I hunger more
Within the boundless riches of My store
Which is Infinity, for kindly rest
To drop in drowsy might upon this Breast,
Which of the oceans that around Me lie
Seeks for some pity that will let it die,
And cannot gain the portion of the brute,
To live its little hour and then be mute.
I have beheld the ages passing by
Beneath My footstool, and new earth and sky
Made and unmade and giving place to fresh,
Which each dissolved in turn its cunning mesh
For others and still others as they came
From the one womb of whirling cloud and flame,
To pass through pomp of universal life
By growing stages of all fruitful strife,
And play with pistons of a cosmic breath
Ere dwindling down to universal death;
And then once more from the great funeral
Of Night supreme and aboriginal
Resume on larger scales the mystic dance
And ever young and ever old romance
Of suns and moons and systems in their bound,
Waxing and wanning as they circled round,
And brake like foam of phosphorescent wave
On Me their Architekton and their grave.
Millennia on millennia now have gone,
While constellations set that proudly shone
For times and seasons past all earthly tale,
And world on world has brightened and turned pale
Though I abode and never might grow less
In the grim circuit of Almightiness.
Ah, I have seen in rhythmic glare and gloom
Strange fates and banqueted on death and doom
Myself unmoved, and in this vast decay
Yet could not from My dungeon flee away,
And this Self-wrought and Self-determined lot
Which shuts Me in to splendour without spot
And immortality. For in the range
Of countless forms I only could not change,
Or briefly darken to a gracious close
And snatch one minute of denied repose,
While all things else knew their appointed end
And found in death a saviour and a friend,
Descending into silence and the dust
To rise again with more refulgent trust.
But wherefore could not I, who needed most
Some respite, for a while desert My post
And slumber in the tomb a certain space
For resurrections of Diviner Grace?
Death rolled around a multitudinous sea
Of shapeless shadows, but refused My plea
For mercy while its surges came and went
And gulfed the kingdom and the continent,
With wan eclipse so infinitely sweet
And bathed in furious impotence My feet,
That might not yield to its corroding wrath
And still paced on their dreary millround path
Embraced by Me and yet abhorred as well,
The Heaven that in its changelessness is hell.
For I alone mid all My creature things
That ebb and flow in ceaseless perishings
And re-appearings, I alone endure
The shock and shelter of the end secure
And soft oblivion which to these may give
Fair funeral for a time while I must live.
I am most weary of the unruffled calm
That brings to Me no compensating balm
In blank persistence, while around, below,
Creation marches to its overthrow
Through superstructions rising tier on tier
From mysteries of bridal to the bier;
And I who thirst to have a kindred share
With these in sweetness of a common care
And draw delicious streams of rapture thence,
Am crushed beneath My own magnificence
Which still abides the same, no less, no more,
Though Death beats on Me as on iron shore
Beat the white breakers that have beat since Time
First woke the madness of their measured chime.
O if I could to nothing now resolve
My Being, who for others may evolve
A portion and a bound and then unmake
The vast machines that at My Will awake,
I were most willing to achieve that rest
Which lies like music on the maiden's breast
Or rocks the roosting bird upon the Deep,
And though not death is its own fellow sleep.
But yet for Me in all uncharted Space
No death can ever find a dwelling-place,
Nor its dear shadow; I go living on,
Without the pity dealt to Babylon
Or universal Rome, whose swords are rust,
Whose palaces are but a pinch of dust.
I feed, I fill the myriad worlds that pass
Like clouds a moment mirrored on the grass,
And richly grant in happiness or grief
The destined lots and lines of fixed relief;
Which I may nowise take Myself, who move
Amid the pleasures that I cannot prove,
And shall for ever range beneath this dome
Of splendid sorrow with no final home,
While system after system billows by,
The hopeless Prisoner of Eternity.”