My Lyrical Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Both heaven and hell are from the human race,
And every soul projects its future place:
Long shadows of ourselves are thrown before,
To wait our coming on the eternal shore.
These either clothe us with eclipse and night,
Or, as we enter them, are lost in light.

“We look on Evil as the shadow dark
Of the reflected bridge; the nether Arc,
That makes some perfect circle of night and day,
Through which our river of life runs on its way
To that wide sea where, all Time-shadows past,
It shall but mirror one clear heaven at last.

339

“There is no Devil such as Milton saw;
No fallen Angel's eyes divined the flaw
In God's work, whereby Man might be accursed.
The Devil was a murderer from the first,
Was said of old. But it was softly nursed
Up from a babe in arms. A little seed
Of sin was sown that grew with little heed.
By door or window little sins will win
A way that widens for the larger sin,
As tiniest lichens, climbing up the wall,
May lend a hand to help the Ivy crawl
That is to tower a conqueror over all
The house in ruin, crumbling to the fall.
Once life is set in motion there upspring
Infinite issues to the smallest thing.
A finger's breadth in swerving as we start
May land us in the end two worlds apart.

“Our parents were not tempted by a Tree
That hung out luscious fruitage, visibly
Held in God's hand, on purpose to beguile
Their simpleness with its suggesting smile.
Take this as symbol of a world within;
There was the serpent born, there bred the sin.
The trees that midmost in the Garden stood,
Took root in soul and blossomed in the blood.
Nor were they left without the inward light,
The starry presence shining through your night,
That shows the wrong while it reveals the right:
The magnet in the soul that points on through
All tempests and still trembles to be true.

340

“The still small voice within cried

‘Do not this,
Or it will lead from me, and ye will miss
The innocent brightness of your morning bliss,
And long in a wild wilderness will stray,
Farther and farther from the primal way,
Until ye lose me, darkling in a cloud
Of your own making, winding like a shroud
About the life I gave; nor feel me near
When ye do call and think there's none to hear.’

“And yet men dally with the thought of wrong
Until they do it: looking down too long,
Like him who, on a perilous mountain ledge,
Gazes upon the gulf, dark o'er the edge,
Till he grows dizzy, and, with brain a-swim,
Forgetting to look up—drops! Or, like him
Who stood and watched that Titan, face to face,
The vast Steam-Hammer, with its monster mace,
Until the blows of its recurrent sound
Snapped his last trembling hold of things around;
Mazed him and drew him nigher, slip by slip,
To thrust his hand into its crushing grip.

“They dallied with wrong-doing, and it grew
Too strong to wrestle with, and overthrew.
Eyes play with Pleasure! Looking overmuch
Sets all the blood a-tingle for the touch!
How the fruit smiles, delicious to the eyes;
How quietly the Snake behind it lies,—
The Beast that in the man erect and crowned
Tends ever to go grovelling on the ground,—
With all his weight bending the branch down near;
The reptile music, sliding through the ear,

341

Winds round the soul, makes it a-tiptoe stand
With love-sick longing till it lifts the hand
To pluck, and feel, and smell, and taste just one
Ripe Apple, whose gold glistens so i' the sun!
But one step over the forbidden marge;
The sin so little, the delight so large!

“Thus is the Devil born: born every day,
Harmless at first as toothless whelps at play;
Is born in thoughts which are the quick live seeds
That will be striving to take shape in deeds;
So would be born could any race begin
Afresh; so form the protoplasm of Sin,
The pustule raised at just a prick of pin;
The nest-egg which the Devil is hatched in.
For Man, the outcome of Creation's past,
Is flower of all earth's life from first to last:
No lower life hath ever passed away
But left its larvæ in the human clay.
No reptile of the slime, no beast of prey,
But human passions personate to-day.
And these break loose to rend in deadly strife,
And will break loose, till, in the higher life,
The soul arisen to her immortal stature
Leads, Una-like, these grim necessities of Nature.

“To picture what I mean: see here, a Wife,
With bosom just a-brood o'er life-in-life,
Who in a fury-fit snatched up a knife
And hurled it at her husband. 'Twas a miss,
Though near enough to hear Death's arrow hiss!
She had not dyed her hand in human blood,
But she had dipped her Unborn in a flood

342

Of wrath that surged and smoked and flashed hell-flame;
Given her babe baptism in the Devil's name:
Stained the pure thing of heaven a lurid hue
With fume o' the pit, the white star reddened through.
And from that Mother-stricken life there grew
A Murderer whose own hand that Mother slew.

“The ghosts of our own crimes long-buried will
Live after us and haunt our children still.
Our vices, hid for generations past,
Break out and blab their secret tale at last.