I.
PROTEUS;
OR, A PRELUDE.
1.
Into the living elements of things
I, Proteus, mingle, seeking strange disguise:
I track the Sun-god on an eagle's wings,
Or look at horror thro' a murderer's eyes,
In shape of hornëd beast my shadow glides
Among broad-leavëd flowers that blow 'neath Afric tides.
2.
Lo! I was stirring in the leaves that shaded
The Garden where the Man and Woman smiled:
I saw them later, raimentless, degraded,
The apple sour upon their tongues; beguiled
By the sweet wildness of the Woman's tears,
I dropt in dew upon her lips, and stole
Under her heart, a stirring human Soul,
The blood within her tingling in mine ears;
And as I lay, I heard a voice that cried
‘Lo, Proteus, the unborn, shall wake to be
Heir of the Woman's sorrow, yet a guide
Conducting back to immortality—
The spirit of the leaves of Paradise
Shall lift him upward, to aspire and rise!’
Then sudden, I was conscious that I lay
Under a heaven that gleam'd afar away:—
I heard the Man and Woman weeping,
The green leaves rustling, and the Serpent creeping,
The roar of beasts, the song of birds, the chime
Of elements in sudden strife sublime,
And overhead I saw the starry Tree,
Eternity,
Put forth the blossom Time.
3.
A wind of ancient prophecy swept down,
And wither'd up my beauty—where I lay
On Paris' bosom, in the Trojan town;
Troy vanish'd, and I wander'd far away,—
Till, lying on a Virgin's breast, I gazed
Thro' infant eyes, and saw, as in a dream,
The great god Pan whom I had raised and praised,
Float huge, unsinew'd, down a mighty stream,
With leaves and lilies heap'd about his head,
And a weird music hemming him around,
While, dropping from his nerveless fingers dead,
A brazen sceptre plunged with hollow sound:
A trackless Ocean wrinkling tempest-wing'd
Open'd its darkness for the clay unking'd;
Moreover, as he floated on at rest,
With lips that flutter'd still in act to speak,
An eagle, swooping down upon his breast,
Pick'd at his songless lips with golden beak.
4.
There was a sound of fear and lamentation,
The forests wail'd, the stars and moon grew pale,
The air grew cloudy with the desolation
Of gods that fell from realmless thrones like hail;
But as I gazed, the great God Pan awaking,
Lookt in the Infant's happy eyes and smiled,
And smiling died; and like a sunbeam breaking
From greenwood olden, rose a presence mild
In exhalation from the clay, and stole
Around the Infant in an auriole—
When, gladden'd by the glory of the child,
Dawn gleam'd from pole to pole.
5.
And, lo! a shape with pallid smile divine
Wander'd in Palestine;
And Adam's might was stately in his eyes,
And Eve's wan sweetness glimmer'd on his cheek,
And when he open'd heavenly lips to speak,
I heard, disturbing Pilate into sighs,
The rustle of those leaves in Paradise!
Then all was dark, the earth, and air, and sky,
The sky was troubled and the earth was shaken,
Beasts shriek'd, men shouted, and there came a cry—
‘My God, I am forsaken!’
But even then I smiled amid my tears,
And saw in vision, down the future years,
What time the cry still rung in heaven's dark dome,
The likeness of his smile ineffable,
Serenely dwell
On Raphael, sunn'd by popes and kings at Rome,
And Dante, singing in his Tuscan cell!
6.
Suddenly, from the vapours of the north,
Ice-bearded, snowy-visaged, Strength burst forth,
Brandishing arms in death:
'Twas Ades, frighted from his seat in Hell
By that pale smile of peace ineffable,
That with a sunny life-producing breath,
Wreathed summer round the foreheads of the Dead,
And troubled Hell's weird silence into joy.
And with a voice that rent the pole he said,
‘Lo, I am Thor, the mighty to destroy!’
The accents ran to water on his mouth,
The pole was kindled to a fiery glow,
A breath of summer floated from the south
And melted him like snow.
7.
Yea thus, thro' change on change,
Haunted for ever by the leafy sound
That sigh'd the Woman and the Man around,
I, Proteus, range.
A weary quest, a power to climb and soar,
Yet never quit life's bitterness and starkness,
A groping for God's hand amid the darkness,
The day behind me and the night before,
This is my task for evermore!
I am the shadow of the inspiration
Breath'd on the Man; I am the sense alone,
That, generation upon generation,
Empowers the sinful Woman to atone
By giving angels to the grave and weeping
Because she knows not whither they are going;
I am the strife awake, the terror sleeping,
The sorrow ever ebbing, ever flowing.
Mine are the mighty names of power and worth
The seekers of the vision that hath fled,
I bear the Infant's smile about the earth,
And put the Cross on the aspirant's head,
I am the peace on holy men who die,
I waft as sacrifice their fleeting breath—
I am the change that is not change, for I
Am deathless, being Death.
8.
For, evermore I grow
Wiser, with humbler power to feel and know;
For, in the end I, Proteus, shall cast
All wondrous shapes aside but one alone,
And stand (while round about me in the Vast
Earth, Sun, Stars, Moon, as snowflakes melt at last,)
A Skeleton that, shadow'd by the Tree,
Eternity,
Holds in his hands the blossom Time full blown,
And kneels before a Throne.
