University of Virginia Library

CREDO QUIA IMPOSSIBILE.

I do believe that in me something dwells
Akin to all and the eternal fact,
Bodied in words or grand incarnate act
Which down the ages rings cathedral bells;
And I am closer Heaven than earth, and more
The spirit of me is than painted flesh
Though cunningly with white and blue-veined mesh
Made sweet and good and pleasant to adore;
And through me thrill the symphonies of Space
To find a chord or two of answering grace,
And here and there a note of rich regretfulness
For other times and chimes in larger lands
When love responded to the Master's hands;
And I may mount to that far great forgetfulness
Which brings us nearest God, and makes the man
The likest Him and the consummate plan.
I cannot think, I would not, if it might
Be possible, this person is but clay
Compounded of the dust and low and slight,
Which takes the impress of each passing day,
Because it must from bondage unto ill,
And dares not upright stand and say “I will;”
Half educated brute, and half a toy
Or mere machine which darkly beats and babbles
And in the scorèd sand a moment scrabbles
Its epitaph, and dies without a joy.
For into me the currents flow, that leap
From under the pure feet of Him who shakes
The granite mountains to a shapeless heap,
And with the mighty moulding thought remakes
The suns and systems all; and from me breathes
Some fragrance of His own Diviner dresses,
That seamless robe of awful righteousnesses,
Wherein He walks and wherein He enwreathes
The tinest atom of the world; I feel
My heart doth echo back His tune,
Amid the uproar of the clanging steel,
And holds within it bright perpetual June
Rose-sweet and warm and with His air delicious,
Though round me moves and mows the clamorous throng
In seeming triumph of most deadly wrong—
Yet is this well, and sorrow most propitious.
I may not tell you why I claim the credo
Dearer than life and love, for words were weak
To syllable the truth if they did speak;
And who could tell his secret so? Could Guido
Give you the hidden mystery that throbs
And palpitates in glowing forms, and art
Which is himself and all his very heart?
The letter kills, the bald expression robs
The glamour of its honey, dew and bloom;
And as you seize the soul of things it perishes
Within your grasp and victory is doom,
And dust abides which some museum cherishes.
I cannot reason out this living faith,
Which burns in me and lifts me high to summits
And down the deep abysses beyond plummets,
Untrodden by the foot of man and known
To nothing mortal and yet most my own;
No phantasy or trick, no idle wraith
Upconjured by a vain imagining,
Or fraud. It mingles with the waft of heather
On tumbled hills, and low soft murmuring
Of many bees in spaces of blue weather;
I hear it in the purling of shy brooks,
The voice of children and the chant of birds
And laughing breezes in sequestered nooks;
It canopies my head like heaven, it girds
My loins with giant youth and bids me run
Rejoicing to the gateways of the sun.
I cannot get away from this, it follows
My flying steps from marble messages
Of fossil forms to lonely silences,
Where whispers Nature in the hush of hollows
Serener things to gentle minds; it falls,
My shadow, on the rim of storied chalices
Whence drank red lips of maidens fair and ripe
Long long ago, and on the broken walls
Of citadels where Time has carved its malices;
In quarried stone and mercy's healing stripe
It hath a portion and it leaves a trace,
And babies' dimples are its dwelling place.
Impossible it is, and therefore yet
In moonrise and the mist where suns have set
And left a golden gospel and the streak
Of glancing dawn which comes and yet comes not
And dallies with its opening door, I mark
Dim prophecies of that which doth not wreak
Its will entire in outwardness of lot
Material, but still touches all the dark
With dashes somewhere of its own divinity,
And is the soul of each young life's virginity.
But I am one with this, what'er it be,
Though in the brunt of brutal might and cunning
That send our blood and tears in rivers running,
Through every time and place, and in the breath
Of pleasure grimly pulse; this makes me free,
King of myself and the wide world and fate,
And bids me enter calm and crowned the gate
Predestined of the tomb, and builds of death
A stepping stone to grander heights. I hear
The murmur of this old and gracious verity,
In hope that singeth and sublimer fear
That reads earth's riddle though with pale temerity;
And in the grinding of the wheels that turn
For ever round and round, and carry men
And universal Nature forth and far
With their tremendous beats, and champ and churn
Our cosmic stuff to living soul or star,
To portals of some new supremer ken.
I cannot write you out a clear particular
Dry thesis framed by logic of my creed,
In loops and links of formulæ vermicular;
For with myself still doth it always grow,
And puts fresh petals out for every need
Of daily use; but in the night I know;
And if false rays should dazzle and deceive
Or nothing seem at last quite sure and noscible,
Yet in mid darkness shall I most believe
Because I am and Truth is so impossible.