Ranolf and Amohia A dream of two lives. By Alfred Domett. New edition, revised |
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 | Ranolf and Amohia |  |
VII.
Air-lording Allemannia! vast and dim
The cloud-racks next our Aeronaut must skim!
Say rather, leave, a Reaper, worn-out fields
Of Thought for golden crops thy culture yields,
Though hedged with worse than Indian orange-thorns—
Sharp subtleties for—Doubt's intrusive horns?—
As Locke's Sensation-creed, worked out, had brought
Matter and Spirit both alike to nought,
Did not those soaring Germans reinstate
Inborn ideas—and hence a Soul innate?
Did not great Kant in pedant's jargon shew
How, paramount within the human Mind—
Not from Sensation nor Experience gained—
Ideas, the fruit of the ‘Pure Reason’ reigned?
As, from this fount Truths Mathematic, so
From this—called Conscience—Moral Truths must flow
By mere necessity? while those two facts,
Conditions fixed, wherein ‘Pure Reason’ acts—
The Soul—the Universe—but presuppose
And force you to the grand Idea behind
Whence both must spring, wherein are both combined—
To God—the source of all that thinks or knows,
All Being's boundless origin and close?—
Did not poor Faith, from shift to shift doubt-prest
Find in that ‘Reason Pure’ peace—refuge—rest?
Trusting both scoff and sceptic-proof to be,
In pachydermatous Philosophy
So puzzling, panoplied? and might not she,
Man's deathless Hope, in such a tangle rude
Of prickly briars of Logic hid away,
Rest like the Beauty in the long-charmed wood,
Serene—secure—inviolable? Say,
Did no great Truth obscure and latent lie
In all that chaff of dialectics dry—
A chrysalis (like that with reeled-off floss,
Bared of its dress, all amber gleam and gloss,
The careful schoolboy hides in homely bran)
Whence a new Psyche should emerge for Man?
Like Psyche's self, say,—from blue Italy
Prepared to cross the rude rough-handling sea,
Laid up in wood and iron, sound and safe
In naked beauty from all chance of chafe;
So closely presses round her spiritual face
And limbs of tender marble and white grace,
The hard-caked sawdust of her packing case.
The cloud-racks next our Aeronaut must skim!
Say rather, leave, a Reaper, worn-out fields
Of Thought for golden crops thy culture yields,
Though hedged with worse than Indian orange-thorns—
Sharp subtleties for—Doubt's intrusive horns?—
As Locke's Sensation-creed, worked out, had brought
Matter and Spirit both alike to nought,
Did not those soaring Germans reinstate
Inborn ideas—and hence a Soul innate?
Did not great Kant in pedant's jargon shew
How, paramount within the human Mind—
27
Ideas, the fruit of the ‘Pure Reason’ reigned?
As, from this fount Truths Mathematic, so
From this—called Conscience—Moral Truths must flow
By mere necessity? while those two facts,
Conditions fixed, wherein ‘Pure Reason’ acts—
The Soul—the Universe—but presuppose
And force you to the grand Idea behind
Whence both must spring, wherein are both combined—
To God—the source of all that thinks or knows,
All Being's boundless origin and close?—
Did not poor Faith, from shift to shift doubt-prest
Find in that ‘Reason Pure’ peace—refuge—rest?
Trusting both scoff and sceptic-proof to be,
In pachydermatous Philosophy
So puzzling, panoplied? and might not she,
Man's deathless Hope, in such a tangle rude
Of prickly briars of Logic hid away,
Rest like the Beauty in the long-charmed wood,
Serene—secure—inviolable? Say,
Did no great Truth obscure and latent lie
In all that chaff of dialectics dry—
A chrysalis (like that with reeled-off floss,
Bared of its dress, all amber gleam and gloss,
The careful schoolboy hides in homely bran)
Whence a new Psyche should emerge for Man?
Like Psyche's self, say,—from blue Italy
Prepared to cross the rude rough-handling sea,
Laid up in wood and iron, sound and safe
In naked beauty from all chance of chafe;
So closely presses round her spiritual face
And limbs of tender marble and white grace,
The hard-caked sawdust of her packing case.
28
But, O conclusion lame and impotent!
O rage of vigorous reasoning vainly spent!
Those fixed Ideas—inseparably blent
With all the rest—Time—Space and Cause—'tis plain,
Though notions connate with the nascent brain,
Have in essential fact no solid ground—
Only within the human soul are found;
Though necessary bases of our thought
Are from no prototypes beyond us brought!
That ‘God’ is but a sort of ghost confined
To haunt the shadowy chambers of the mind!
As if within a glass-roofed palace grew
Some strange grand Tree of mystic shape and hue,
With various virtues wondrously arrayed—
With mighty fronds and majesty of shade,
And towering crest sufficiently sublime;
Within those vitreous walls compelled, no doubt,
By nature's laws luxuriantly to sprout,
But with no fellow—no resemblance known,
Or able to exist in any clime
'Mid the green glories of the world without;
A most magnificent, yet monstrous cheat,
Proud overgrowth of artificial heat,
And that peculiar edifice alone;
No shade or shelter offering when you ply
Your weary way beneath the naked sky!
O rage of vigorous reasoning vainly spent!
Those fixed Ideas—inseparably blent
With all the rest—Time—Space and Cause—'tis plain,
Though notions connate with the nascent brain,
Have in essential fact no solid ground—
Only within the human soul are found;
Though necessary bases of our thought
Are from no prototypes beyond us brought!
That ‘God’ is but a sort of ghost confined
To haunt the shadowy chambers of the mind!
As if within a glass-roofed palace grew
Some strange grand Tree of mystic shape and hue,
With various virtues wondrously arrayed—
With mighty fronds and majesty of shade,
And towering crest sufficiently sublime;
Within those vitreous walls compelled, no doubt,
By nature's laws luxuriantly to sprout,
But with no fellow—no resemblance known,
Or able to exist in any clime
'Mid the green glories of the world without;
A most magnificent, yet monstrous cheat,
Proud overgrowth of artificial heat,
And that peculiar edifice alone;
No shade or shelter offering when you ply
Your weary way beneath the naked sky!
“Why, if this God's a product of our own,
Which ends in us, though there perforce it breeds,
A doubtful light which but to darkness leads,”
Said Ranolf's Guide—“what waste of toil and time
These more than acrobatic feats to climb
Such crags precipitous, such slippery heights,
Where no rewarding view our toil requites;
No vision of the City long-desired,
Though brief as that in Moslem myths—perchance
Seen standing—sudden—silent—sunrise-fired
Before the desert-wanderer's awestruck glance;
Far stretching multitudinous array
Of gilded domes and snowy minarets,
And tiers of long arcades rich-roofed with frets
More delicate than frostwork! then again
Gone—vanished! and a hundred years in vain
Resought, but gladdening nevermore the day.
Not e'en such glimpse, O mighty Kant!—at most
When we have reached your height at so much cost,
In densest fog we see a finger-post
You say directs us to that City fair,
But is no proof of any City there!
Some letters on its arms obscurely seen
Your spectacles discover; what they mean
In worse than three-tongued wedge-rows sealed up fast,
We have to take from you on trust at last.”
Which ends in us, though there perforce it breeds,
A doubtful light which but to darkness leads,”
Said Ranolf's Guide—“what waste of toil and time
These more than acrobatic feats to climb
Such crags precipitous, such slippery heights,
29
No vision of the City long-desired,
Though brief as that in Moslem myths—perchance
Seen standing—sudden—silent—sunrise-fired
Before the desert-wanderer's awestruck glance;
Far stretching multitudinous array
Of gilded domes and snowy minarets,
And tiers of long arcades rich-roofed with frets
More delicate than frostwork! then again
Gone—vanished! and a hundred years in vain
Resought, but gladdening nevermore the day.
Not e'en such glimpse, O mighty Kant!—at most
When we have reached your height at so much cost,
In densest fog we see a finger-post
You say directs us to that City fair,
But is no proof of any City there!
Some letters on its arms obscurely seen
Your spectacles discover; what they mean
In worse than three-tongued wedge-rows sealed up fast,
We have to take from you on trust at last.”
| Ranolf and Amohia | |