The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

A deep grey eye, a meek grey face,
Grey sandy hair and garb worn grey,
A limp loose form, a hurried pace
That loitered never by the way,
And knew no leisure and no play;
A wistful look of painèd thought,
As if he must, yet feared to think,

277

For his too daring Reason wrought
Dread of itself, as on the brink
Of chasms from which he fain would shrink:
Much-pondering, his soul could see
But God in all the things that be,
In subtle matter, and changeful force,
In joy and anguish and remorse;
No dual empire could he find,
But all was matter, and all was mind.
So had he lost his early faiths,
And glory of his simple youth,
And this had been like many deaths,
Though dying into larger truth.

This world, he said, all things divine
Are but the great God's uttered thought:
His work is not like thine or mine
Which brains have planned, and tools have wrought;
It is, yet out of Him is not.
He makes the light, He makes the shade
That limits it with form; yet light
Is nothing but the ripple made
By rhythmic motion, giving sight
And wondrous vision of delight.
And shadow too is noting. Why,
My shadow surely is not I;
'Tis nothing; yet I make it; well
My form and features it shall tell,
And yet I use no art to make
This nothing, which for me you take.—
Thus dreamily the mystic spoke,
And ever as his thought was spent,
It rose again like wave that broke
In never-ending argument.

For all his thoughts of soul and mind
Were shaped by hard material law;
And yet no matter could he find,
But mind created what it saw,
And of its shadows stood in awe:
And God was all. The solid earth,
The rivers and the shining seas,
And all to which the heavens gave birth,
And all the rocks and hills and trees,
And grass and flowers and birds and bees,
All were but pictured thoughts which shone
As sparks from rapid wheel are thrown,
And gleam out in the dark, and then
Pass into nothingness again.
Yet while the world he thus refined
Into fine forms of subtle mind,
The subtle mind he made again
Gross by material forms of thought,
And chemic forces in the brain
Our vices and our virtues wrought.

Still gathering knowledge, day by day,
Unwearying in his search for light,
He gathered scruples by the way,
Till scarce one way of life seemed right,
And he was in a helpless plight.
He scrupled at the Church's creed,
Although he held her mission grand;
He scrupled at all paths which lead
To honour in an ancient land
Whose bridges have the ages spanned:
He scrupled at the tricks and lies,
Unscrupulous, of merchandise;
And while all science he pursued,
He held no art or practice good,
Till, as by threads of cob-web dim,
All paths of life seemed shut to him;
For still the scrupulous conscience stood
And barred the way when it should lead,
And made him helpless unto good,
That he from evil might be freed.

Fain would we laugh his scruples down,
But there his truth rebuked our mirth;
He sought not riches or renown
Nor any fatness of the earth,
Might he but keep his honest worth;

278

No envy had he of the great,
No drop of bitterness had he,
He was contented with the state
Of noble-minded poverty,
Well-pleased of no account to be.
To hammer great thoughts out of stones,
And fossil leaves, and scales and bones;
To give imagination wings,
And frame the universe of things
From chaos, or from nothing—that
Was all he cared to labour at.
And so he drifted still along,
Having no social roots or ties,
Self-fettered by his scruples strong,
Yet making many good and wise.