 | Flotsam and Jetsam |  |
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A SOUL OF GOODNESS IN THINGS EVIL.
(To M.D., 1841.)
I
Dearest! by laws of their own are the Spirits of all of us governed;Feelings identical quite, seldom can two of us share;
Lately we proved it a truth, when the blindness of that so revered One,
Mastered by delicate skill, left him a prisoner freed;
When from the rapturous East insupportable Light reapproaching
Came like a conqueror crowned triumphing into his soul,
Entered the long-closed portals, and routing the legions of Darkness,
Gladdened the eyes that of yore gleamed as he oft would recount
Feats of Sea-Captains—our grand ones; or keen as the Chilian eagle's,
Rapid as lynxes that leap over the plains of Thibet,
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Wandering homes of the Deep, stealing through sunshine and shade,
Swelling and shrinking so slowly from one to the other horizon—
Spectres that silently rise, silently melt into air!
II
Sad that immurement in sooth; thick-stifling the pall that envelopedWholly this exquisite World, making a midnight at noon;
Green-waving Earth with her cities, the luminous purples of Heaven,—
Life's inexhaustible shows, swooned to a desolate blank;
Quenched were the golden enigmas that shine overhead, and the lindens
Blossoming close by the door, felt in faint odours, were gone;
Gone was the innocent archness of beauteous grandchildren's glances;
Dimmed all the splendour that played sunnily over their hair!
Books too, that give to the spirit a foretaste of bodiless freedom.
Argosies floating through Time, charged with the commerce of thought;
Books that enwrap and embalm dead Intellects living for ever—
Sealed up, inanimate, dumb, turned to mere mummies of Mind.
—How, like a Ship dismasted, a log on the limitless Ocean,
Drifts such a lustreless life, breasting the billows of woe!
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III
Such was the mournful calamity, such and so great the affliction;Like was our joy when it ceased—only diversely displayed.
Mary! your heart gushed gratefully forth in a passionate stanza
Flung from a fiery soul hundreds of ages ago;
Words which the diademed Minstrel, throned by the mountains of morning,
Chaunted to harpstrings that rung grandly o'er Siloa's chime!
Notable they and familiar, those words of the Warrior-Poet;
Why!—but that therein he dives daringly into the deep—
Into the infinite Darkness which is (for how else can we phrase it?)
Is the ineffable One—cause and substratum of life!
Therein personifies boldly that all-inconceivable Essence;
Scruples no whit to ascribe human affections thereto;
Aye! from his clear deep sense of a conscious ubiquitous presence,
Moulds individual Will, fashions a generous friend;
Dares e'en to ‘bless’ the unspeakable Wonder for ‘tenderest mercies’!—
—Transient bubble of foam blessing the Ocean it specks!
IV
Seems it not idly presuming in mortals to predicate everBe what it may as to Him, Him or his ‘feelings’ for us?
Truly, my Mary, 'twere wisest to take with a calm acquiescence
Whether the good or the ill, measureless mysteries both!
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Tell me the ill, if you can, never productive of good!
Just to this life let us be, with its joys and its sorrows so blended;
Then amid raptures for good, evil will not go unpraised.
V
Ah, when I think of that scene of endurance and anguish and triumph,And with the eye of the mind picture its phases again—
There in his darkness the Old Man, hoary with seventy winters—
Lionlike—equal to all—lording it sternly o'er pain;
There with his glorious power, the Son of miraculous Science,
Clearing new paths for the light, waving the shadows away;
There too, in depth of suspense—mute—dumb but for glances of trouble,
Dearest relations and friends anxiously waiting apart;
Or, when the crisis was over, with keen unrelaxing affection,
Watching by day and by night, utterly dead to themselves;
Then, can I say how this poor undervalued Humanity straightway
Shining in rainbow light, trembles transfigured, sublime!
Then in my soul I acknowledge the mystical beauty of Evil,
Stimulant, nutriment, cause, precious occasion of all—
Rich dark soil whence arose such ambrosial fruits of the spirit,
Fortitude, patience and hope, science, affection and joy!
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VI
Well is it, Mary mine, so to regard the afflictions of others—Well, but far better be sure, so to consider our own
And to remember in sorrow or suffering how much we are feeding
Goodness, and laying up stores Virtues around us require.
VII
Long may the rescued one live in this new light arisen at even,Strange, as when cloud has obscured darkly the firmament's face,
Haply the curtain is raised, and the red and the richness of sunset,
Tranquilly, tearfully bright, stream at the skirts of the sky!
Nay! not to sunset or evening gleams will we liken that new light;
Cheerfuller symbol therein beings immortal should see!
Call it the faint dawn rather of the infinite Day that awaits us,
Coming Eternity's sun casting its glimmer before,
So to expand and intensify, spite of a moment's relapsing,
Into a noon unconceived, never to darken again!
1841.
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