University of Virginia Library

TO MY MOTHER.

Dead Woman, if thou dost not fear too much
The jarring of the terrible earth, glance down
Upon these lines, though with a hurried look.

[The heaven is silent, silent is the earth!]

The heaven is silent, silent is the earth!
As in some sore-encompassed city, we,
Shut in the citadel, still cry to those
Who watch upon the walls, pale sentinels
Of Science, peering into Space, “What now?”
And still the answer comes, “No sign, no sound,
But only millions upon millions
Of stars!” The old, the orient winds have dropped;
A dead calm is upon us; yet at times
The air in which we breathe, begins to stir,
To heave, and shiver as before a storm;
The storm of Truth; but in the pause and hush,
I sing, a warning bird, that under dumb
And ominous stillness trembles into song.

EREMUS.

I.

II.

Well were it for me had I on the earth,
Yonder dear earth, steadfastly fixed my gaze!
Then had I not been stretched on these high snows,
By God and man abandoned. But too soon
I came to know that calm was not for me,
Nor ever mine the long untroubled life;
No! but to sigh and strive. There is a peace
Of earth, a solace in a simple creed;
There is a peace of heaven; but all between,
Regions of restless wind, haunted of storm,
Where I, and such as I, must roam for ever!
Thousands around me every day I saw
Live happily within a narrow range,
Not over joyous, and not over sad;
They sinned not much, and strove they not at all;
But when I looked into myself, I saw
No days of tranquil labour granted me,
No nights of dreamless sleep. This happiness
Never was mine, but everlasting calls
To self control; and passion hung on me
Like to a dangerous sleep that, all his watch,
Hangs on the eyelids of a sentinel.
All through the day I checked and foiled myself,
My every impulse turbulent, every thought
Perilous, and deadly every passing whim.
Each hour lay on me with its awful choice,
So heavy that I oft have wished myself
Dead, dead for ever in the quiet earth!
Were it not better not to have been born?
Yet, O my God, I cried, if this were so,
Why with such bliss hast thou disturbed me, oft
Illumining the passage of the nights?
What means this wild conflict of night and day
Within me? Why to me and not to all,
Is life so terrible a thing to live?
And wearier still and wearier I grew
Of passion, of the fit that came and went;
The tossing to and fro did seem to me
As hateful as his bed to the sick man,
Who turns and turns. O give me peace, I cried,
Even though it were to be for ever cold!
Though I should lose the bliss of living, yet
Should I not lose this starting of the heart,
This fever, this necessity to feel?
But though I stilled my heart, I found no peace.
How could I live out of my time? this age
When faith is waning like a waning moon,
A ghost in heaven, a fireless shell; and we
Seem standing in the awful dawn of Truth,
And in the first cold, grey, and godless hours
Appalled by each fresh streak of light! On me,
As upon others, came the thirst to know.
Me, then I cried, from the high quest, no voice
Too dear, such as distracts the world of men,
Shall turn: had I not looked abroad and seen
Mankind unnerved with loves and hates, and mad
With wild farewells? Ah, how should he, I sighed,
Passionate man, the fool of every breath,
With these vexed ears attain at last to hear
The immortal voices, or through mists of tears,
Too quickly gathering mists of human tears,
Which dim the clear eye of the mind, see true?
Would he not evermore be hanging back
For one last kiss, for yet one more farewell?
But I with unvexed ears, and undimmed eyes,
Will reach to truth. And now I cast from me,
Like garments that would clog me, friendships, loves,
Even ties of kith and kin, until I stood
Free as a swimmer, stript for the great plunge.
Alone I lived, and bolted out the world,
And saw no face, nor ever footstep heard
Of living thing; awake when all did sleep;
Alive when all was dead; until at last
I stood in the wild night, in that waste place,
Loveless, alone, and at the end of life,
Staring out into space with haggard eyes.
What yet remains for me to know? Here space
Stops me, and seems to scare me back to men.

III.

Alone among the living! but one dead
Haunted me from his grave; Julian, my friend.
I seemed to hear him speaking: Ah, some day,
In some far planet, we shall meet perchance,
And see things clear. Where art thou, Julian?
I said; I cannot think of thee in heaven;
I hope, yet fear, for thee. Hast thou outlived
The passions which undid thee here? Thou wast
Of those for whom we tremble when they die;
We trust, yet cannot think, they are in peace.
On thee, God flung the fires of his delight,
But gave thee no control, and let thee drive
Like some tall ship aflame, that throwing off
Spar after blazing spar upon the waves,
Down the great, melancholy waters burns.
Thy soul has passed to its appointed place:
Thou wilt not fly with myriads into heaven,
Nor be thrust down with thousands into hell!
Whither thou goest no spirit yet hath come,
Nor shall come; with the lost thou canst not rest,
Ever, nor in the general anthem drown
Thy individual agonies and hopes.
If I could see thee yet again, my friend
For whom I tremble, and yet darkly hope,
How would'st thou greet me? with what messages
From many and strange lands! if once again
I could behold thee, speak to thee, perchance!
I could return, and be in peace, and die.
Still the wild night blew round me; and I caught
What seemed a stifled, spiritual cry
Out of the wind, till I at last broke forth:
Spirit of Night, is this indeed thy breath
I feel about me? Is it indeed thy voice
That strives to reach me from the invisible wind?
Art thou abroad upon the gloomy blast?
And hast thou power to bring me face to face
With Truth, sad spirit, older even than God?
Almost I could believe it. Lo, about me
The great world lying dead, and in deep sleep!
I only am awake, and the live sea.
From God I wring no answer, thee I ask;
Speak clearer to me, sombre Spirit; thou
Wast old and wise before this feverish planet
Was lit, a spark in space. Hear me, perchance
Still hugging to thy breast some secret old,
Which God hath not yet wrested. Look on me,
Who, as some prisoner, after long watching
Escaped, and standing on the heath without,
Knows not which way to turn, whither to fly,
But almost longs again for the dull round,
The life mapped out and measured for the feet;
So I have broken the prison of this world,
Where most men breathe, but live not, and so I
Am free, terribly free; would not return,
Yet know not whither to fly. I care not what
May come to me; I only live to know!
Let me see Truth, then blot me out for ever,
Or take my soul to thee for evermore.
I spoke; dead silence fell, and all the heavens
Listened; I was afraid, and on my face
Dropped to dear earth. As one who, in the still
And deepest noontide, hears the far-off storm
Crawl up the heavens; then thunder, and a hush,
And in the pause the world is filled with rain!
Even so I felt the distant approach of doom,
Breathless: I felt that I had sinned: my soul
Is mine no more, but is surrendered up,
Never to be recalled, a fallen leaf,
Liable to what illimitable winds!
Motionless as I lay, and madly clung
In terror to the firm, familiar earth,
As though, upon a sudden, body and soul
Together might be swept away, I heard,
Or rather felt, or heard with all my soul,
A voice near to me, soft, as of a god.
“Mortal, thy yearning hath o'erpassed the bounds
Of thy mortality; if thou canst dare,
Stripped of all earthly leanings, as a spirit,
The immeasurable space, that yet hath felt
No footprint, save of spirit; at thy prayer
Lo, I am come to guide thee; but once doubt,
Falter or fear, and thy mortality
Will fly from immortality, thyself
Be lost in utter space.” I, lying still,
Struck in the earth my fingers, and from there
Murmured: “Who art thou, come as an amen
To my wild prayer? I hold communion
With night, and of the night, it seems, art thou!
I knew not what I said, my brain did reel:
Ah, do not on my mad and scattered words,
Lay such an emphasis! Here is my world,
Where I was born, where I must live and die
As other men: thou art a spirit; what
Have I to do with thee? O leave me here
To pray, and to repent, and to return.”

IV.

Then, like a whisper, not into the ear,
But like a whisper to the soul, the voice
Answered: “I am the spirit of the Wind;
Ask no more awful name. Thy prayer is heard.
As I lay dreaming at the feet of Night,
My mother, came thy thought to me. At times
Rise up to me the dark and lawless sighs
Of men upon thy planet; but never yet
Rose such a lonely exclamation,
As from a man cut off from other men,
Pacing impatiently the puny world.
Art thou at peace, Eremus? Is there peace
For such as thee upon this globe? The earth
To the mass of men is tolerable; they
Strive not, and linger on amid the fields:
'Tis such as thou who cannot live their life.
Yet it may be, when world on world of change
Has wrought on thee, a myriad, myriad years
Hereafter, that while those thou seëst now,
Sleep, as they lived, content beneath the sod,
Thy spirit, out of wild and godless tracts,
Shall, tried with thunder, sanctified with storm,
Move darkly upward to the heaven of heavens,
Or murmur with mutinous angels in the deeps.
Then thou shalt pause above this sun, and see
That while those men whose calm thou enviest now
Sleep, dead alike to happiness and pain,
Thou only art awake, and shalt survive!
Seek not to raise between me and thyself
A barrier of words of human speech;
Thou canst not come between me and thy soul;
I know thee, and have known thee from thy birth.”
I from the ground rose slowly, and looked at him.
His face was calm: but yet, like mighty clouds,
In shadows driven across the northern deep,
Even so the flying thoughts did come and go
Across his face, now bright and now obscured:
Even so his aspect altered as the seas.
After long time I whispered: “Yet, to break
In my unripe and green mortality
Into the air of spirits; in the flesh
To hurry into space before my time!
How should I pass the long celestial lines,
Challenged by sentinel after sentinel,
And knowing not the pass-word of that host?”
But he made answer: “Tremble not to tempt
Forbidden air, if thou art free of earth.
Strip from thee therefore any creed that keeps
A corner in thy soul, perhaps some dear,
Some special faith that seems not yet quite vain,
Told, long ago, beside thy mother's knee,
Or whispered at evening o'er thy childish bed.
So shall no voice from the remembered earth
Suddenly claim thee in that air, and thou
Shalt cry aloud for earth, as doth a child.
Thus only can I bear thee where thy friend
Julian abides; thus only can I bring
Thy body before the face of utter Truth.”
Now, like to one who stands upon the edge
Of some sheer precipice, if he glance down
The very depth and terror of the place,
Woos him to leap and lose himself; so I
Suddenly felt the wild impulse to spring
Into the vast unknown. Ah! would that then
Some haunting face, full of old memories,
Had from the world looked out, and beckoned me
Back; or a thrilling voice out of the past
Had murmured in my ears, If not for thine,
Yet for my sake, forbear! But there was none.
I trembled; for in my advance and march
To knowledge, I had laid the sweet world waste
Behind me, nor could I again fall back
Upon that barren solitary land,
That earth, which should have wound its mother's arms
About my neck, and with sweet accents stopped
My ears, and saved me from that murmuring voice.
Above, beyond me, the great stars did seem
To woo me with a wondrous whispering.
“I come,” I cried, “What matter though I perish!
None here will mourn me, none shall ever find
My body, or shall build a tomb for me;
Or, if they find me, it will be on some
Yet unreached height, and men in after years
Will see my skull grin to the moon, and say:
Men in those days climbed well.” Far off the dawn
Broke. “Take me hence!” I cried; “I cannot stay
To see the sun light up this hollow world.”
“Come!” said the spirit; and even at his word,
The great earth downward flashes from our feet,
A star, fast fading 'mid a thousand stars.

V.

Come either side of me, close, close to me,
And let me feel your hands in mine, and know
I speak again as man unto mankind,
As I was born to speak, not holding now
Forbidden converse with the mighty fiend.
Him was I first aware of, when we two
Burst into silence; and I seemed as one
Who, mad with heat and laughter, staggers out
Into the solemn, cool, and glittering night,
Awed on a sudden by the ancient stars.
Him was I first aware of at my side,
The only life. “Look back!” he said; I looked;
And I beheld, far off as t'were, mankind
Shivering about the fire of this world's star,
While in the darkness ranged mysterious powers;
Like those who round a blazing circle sit
In a vast forest watched by wild beasts' eyes.
Then we began to soar; and as we soar,
The mighty heaven begins to snow with stars;
Till at the last I cried: “O let me die!
What matter though I perish? I am nothing,
I dare not live here; I can bear no more
This vast scheme of an Intellect that knows
No stop, no doubt. Alas! My home, my world,
Thou art gone from me for ever, amid fires
An indistinguishable fire! O God!
What should I do, I, who am in the flesh,
I, who was born, I, who have yet to die!
Space, like a giant rushing on me, wrings
Hopes and beliefs from me, crying aloud:
Out of these myriads, what are thine to me?
O thou great angel, save me! I begin
To falter and to doubt, and if I doubt,
I fall for ever; I am falling! dying!”
“Mortal, despair not yet;” the angel's voice
Stayed me, about then to surrender me
Up to vacuity. How changed a voice
From that which wooed me thro' the breezy night!
“That which comes over thee is but the last
Wild wrench and struggle of mortality;
Henceforth thou shalt be free. Even so when souls
Have left the body, ere they take their flight,
They linger on the limits of the earth;
Some memory still stirs them, or some pain,
And they look back and cry, but all their cry
Comes to their kindred like a moaning wind,
Where they sit sadly by the hearth; and one,
At the sound, rising, will look forth and say:
'Tis a wild night! Yet if of thine own strength
Thou canst not bear it out, and earthly things
Still shake thee, if thou canst not quite forget,
Have faith in me. Here thou art spent, it seems:
Thou canst not live in regions such as these;
Here thou art dying! What then wilt do
In tracts where spirits themselves are overwhelmed,
Unhampered by the flesh? Choose then, at once;
To fall and die; or to put faith in me.”
He ceased; and still the starry heavens go by
In glory, streaming silent as a dream.
As to his mother runs a child, I ran
Even to that breast! Under his wings secure,
I dared to gaze upon the coming heavens.
Still soared we on; and stars a moment since
Before us as a diamond spark in space,
Glittering amid a myriad glittering lights,
Orb for a moment into worlds distinct
With passing sea and mountain, and behold!
Far off catch fire, till they are stars again,
Glittering amid a myriad glittering lights
Behind us; and as one who, hurrying
By night, sees from the fiery engine sparks
Fly past him, so, far off, as far as eye
Could reach, the boundless air was filled with small,
Innumerable, remote and flying stars.
Friends, I beheld them face to face; no more
Celestial candles lit for us alone,
But giant systems travelling for ever,
Each on his separate path. We made them dear,
And spiritual; they did seem so far
Above our foaming seas, they were so calm,
After our raging storms. And yet, and yet,
To me, who knew them as of old on earth,
They had not half the glory which they gave,
Seen thro' a single human tear. But now
The brilliance seemed to fade and die away,
And rarer, and more rare the stars arose,
Swept by us, and were lost; but yet at times
Large melancholy spheres stole out on us,
Pale palaces of pain and homes of woe;
Till only at stupendous intervals,
Immense and solitary planets burned.
More drear and drear it seemed. Then said the Spirit:
“Lo! we are passed at length the realm of light
And order; here the maker of the flower
No empire hath, he sows not in these fields;
And no thing grows or blows, but chaos here
With sounding, sad waves, everlastingly
Breaks sullen on the walls of builded light.
And here unpardoned, hopeless, homeless things
Wander, no limit to their wandering set.”
Here we no longer soared, but drifted on;
And sweet soft voices of the unforgiven
Came to us; faces full of memories
Looked out upon us, weary faces, spirits
For ever wandering, waste and unreclaimed.
A listless apathy was on them; some
Gathered in groups, yet each one seemed alone;
And with a hush they spoke of happiness,
As of one dead. “Here,” said the Spirit, “far
From progress and from light exiled, behold
Julian, absorbed as in a dream, his face
For ever lifted to the floor of heaven.”

VI.

As one who through vast London, in the stream
Of faces, sees a face that makes him pause
A moment, murmuring: Somewhere have I known
That face before; then plunges on again
Into the tide of men; so dim I saw
The face of Julian, and remembered him.
“O friend of earth,” I cried, “look on me; leave
The vision that still holds thee from my arms,
And, for a little space, remember me!
Lo! I have tempted the forbidden air
To see thy face again. How is't with thee?
Why dost thou tarry here, most fiery spirit,
In fields, to starry vegetation dead,
Which never drink the living rains of God,
Outside the realms of light and order? Lo,
I conjure thee by the sweet past, if this
Have power upon thee still, and by thy words;
Some day, in some far planet, we shall meet
And see things clear. Speak to me, though I seem
To vex thee from a vision still and deep,
Where I am nothing, or but as the earth,
A thing o'erpast.” Then he slowly relaxed
His gaze from the far floor of heaven, as one,
With pain returning from a dream too bright,
Gropes his way back into reality;
And answered: “If thou art indeed my friend
Of earth, Eremus, how then art thou here,
Living and in the body? Hast thou broke
Before thy time the limits set thee, not
Made strong by death to face eternity?
Nor yet as I, who, seeing, by the eye
Unfettered, hear, untrammelled by the ear.
Hast thou thus voyaged, and hast yet to die?
Alas! I pray thee get thee back! unless
Such voyage hath no return; O pause and think!
As thou cam'st hither, didst thou see a star
Or single planet that did swerve a jot
Out of his fixed and everlasting course?
Remember but our earth, that little earth,
Somewhere perhaps in space still glimmering.
There even not a smallest drop of dew
Misses its own peculiar blade of grass,
And there the springing of the loneliest flower
Is to the instant timed; 'tis I alone,
Lawless, and solitary, and exiled,
Who, without limits, wander where I list,
Outside this order and this scheme. But thou
Hast broken out of earth as from a prison,
And fevered space with thy humanity!
Then, though God spy thee not from heaven, and though
The lightning, flashing like his unsheathed sword,
Or arrow from his pacing sentinels
Find thee not; yet what death, what end at last
Awaits thee! through vacuity to sink!
While worlds may come and go; falling, falling!
No heaven for thee, no hell, but vacancy.
Great Nature, who from her first hour has toiled
In one perpetual groove, feels thy revolt,
And upward from the trembling drop of dew
Even to her farthest star is shivering.
O! get thee back: for at thy side I see
A Spirit, than whom none is mightier;
For once he fought with God!” Turning, I saw
That angel: rapt he stood; I marked the hush,
And gathered menace of his face: one wing
Was lifted as for everlasting flight;
One quivered with his trance; while to himself
He muttered, like soft thunder, in a dream.
“He, even he,” I whispered, “when the night
Was worn with morning, found me on the earth
Sad and unsatisfied; and like a breeze
His voice is at my ear, soft murmuring:
If thou canst dare the immeasurable space,
Stript of all earthly leanings, as a spirit,
Lo! I am come to guide thee. And his voice
Had power upon me, for it seemed that I
Might, ere I died, behold the face of Truth.
No single voice out of the living world,
Called to me; I had cut me off from men,
From loves and hates, for these methought would clog
My flight for Truth; the fevers of the heart,
For such I deemed them, I abhorred; our earth
Was dead to me: and easily I stept
From off that star, and plunged in the unknown.
But past my flesh Heaven with her planets fell.
I failed and cried to him. Then answered he:
Believe in me, or here begin to fall!
Then I fled to him. So I have endured
Out unto thee, dead friend; and what remains
For me, I care not, so I look on Truth.
But thou, how cam'st thou hither?” Then at length
He answered: “When the bitterness of death
Was past, I was alone outside the world.
Suddenly she whom I have loved, and must
For ever love, was with me; and at once,
Each knew the other, and we rushed to meet:
But instantly an angel stood between,
Dividing us, and spoke: In life that's o'er
Ye met by chance a moment, on the earth;
Henceforth your ways are evermore apart.
Ah! but we met, I cried. Then in despite
Of that stern angel we together rushed,
And kissed a last long kiss; we did not part
As earthly lovers part, at death, and say:
I too shall die, and soon will be with thee!
But life, perpetual life, divided us;
Eternity, in which to quite forget!
Then, in a moment, is she caught away
Into a far-off star, and I was left
Gazing; and I began to drift, but found
No place, no home in any of these worlds,
A stranger looking in upon a feast,
An alien, insupportably alone!
Until at last I came to this waste place,
Upon the verge of Chaos, far from light.

VII.

“Here I abide in silence, silence dead,
Unvisited by rushing wing, or feet
Of wandering angel; and to this I might
Resign myself, and, losing hope, lose pain,
And in despair find everlasting peace:
But that the heavy stillness is at times
Broken with storms of hope, which call to me
To live and love. The sadness on my soul,
So it were ever sadness, I could bear;
But ever and anon I am disturbed
From my despair, haunted with happiness,
Which will not suffer me to sleep, and be
At rest; and then I cry to my beloved,
Somewhere far from me, and by such a sea
Thundered apart, and sundered, and estranged.
Hast thou forgotten, love? O! yet, at times,
At times, I can but think thou still must feel;
Disturbed from bliss, as though a door in heaven
Had oped, and closed again; then shalt thou stir,
And shiver; a moment half remember me;
A moment dimly speak my name again,
Then turn away to peace. Yet it was I
Who with a voice too wild, it may be, broke
The virgin stillness freezing round thy soul;
And there are depths in thee, which I alone
Have sounded, and which none shall sound again,
In that high star which holds thee from my sight;
And in thy soul are chambers sealed up,
Rooms passion-haunted, sacred unto me,
Of which I keep the keys for evermore!
Have I not held thee to my heart, when both
Our souls rushed to our lips, and met and clung?
Have I not known thee in another mood,
From that in which thou now art so content,
When all thy hair fell round me, and thyself
Wast earth, all earth, and flesh and burning blood?
God, thou hast caught her far away from me,
Into a cold star, to a perfect world,
To joy untroubled; thou dost know her; thou
Who madest her, thou didst not make her, Lord,
All spirit; thou rememberest what she was,
Smelling of thy sweet earth, and rainy fresh:
Is she content with meek adorings, cold
And solemn chants? Is she become at last
A holy thing? Is she whom once I knew
Dead, dead for ever? Hast thou taken away
Her smile, the look at times she turned on me,
Dear trivial things; were these but for a space?
But if this were not all; if thou, O God!
With earthly things hast taken quite from her
A care for earthly love, saying, Forget!
Hast thou given love, and taken love away,
As thou hast taken away the fragrant hair
I knew, the hand I held, the lips I kissed;
Is this permitted even to Omnipotence?
Why didst thou suffer me to take her hand,
Her little earthly hand? We met, we loved,
And nothing evermore can alter that;
It has been, and can never not have been.
How should I greet her with a different soul,
Bleached like the lily to eternal white,
A listless angel? Ah, not unto me
Hast thou commanded: Sleep thy fever off!
Am I forgotten and cannot forget?
Yet even her at times I lose awhile,
I cannot ever cling to her, for as
The strength of some strong word upon the tongue
Repeated oft, in repetition dies,
So she, whom I repeat unto myself
For evermore, to keep me from despair,
At length becomes far-off, impossible.”
He ceased, and such a moment now it seemed
Passed over him, when even she, his love,
Began to fail, and in the stars, fading,
To leave him desolate. “O unhappy soul!”
I answered, “yet than I much happier!
How an I now deceived! for on our earth
I said farewell to Passion. Now I see
Passion still lives, and dies not with our death.
'Tis this alone that keeps thee from despair;
'Tis this that, breaking in on thy repose,
Thunders out hope to thee, hope still and love
Eternal, that permits thee not to rest,
Or to decline in endless apathy.
But as for me, I have no living thing
To love, nor am beloved by living thing.
And if I drop in this great flight, from which
These dumb and apathetic plains afford
A moment's breathing space, I drop alone.
But thou hast still thy hope. On some far day
Thou shalt look up and hear that voice again
Speak softly to thee down the ardent night:
That face shall draw thee upward, upward yet,
From these dead tracts, until thou art at last
With her thou lovest, and, like her, made pure.
Thou canst not long abide in godlessness,
For fear of everlasting loss of her.”
So saying, from all words I ceased, ashamed;
For now it seemed that I, with trivial
Solace, upon his sorrow did intrude;
And silence fell: then slowly in my ear
Returned that angel's voice, who now with wings
Wide-spread for flight, hung sullen in the void,
Seen in that heavy air lurid and large,
As o'er a fog-bound city the red sun.
His voice again I heard, “Come to my side,
Come, we who love not, on! on to the end!”
I, looking back on Julian, beheld
His face once more uplifted to the heavens,
Forgetting me, and all things save his love.

VIII.

Out of the desert urging endlessly
Our voyage, gradually the open winds,
Which there had dropped, rising beneath us, made
A murmur. “Now prepare thee,” said the Spirit,
“For dangers, not to life alone, but mind;
And not to body, only, but to soul.
The region we approach, of which even now
There comes the rumour, lies far off the realm
Of Order. Here all things are free, and roam
Unchecked; seek not to encounter or oppose
These forces, or at once thou art o'erwhelmed.”
Such warning give the Angel, hurrying
Toward the abyss; but on the brink he paused.
“Hail, elements! I call to you as friends.
Soon comes the hour, when we and ancient Night
Rising, shall wash away this stranger God,
Who, in a dream of beauty glowing, rose
And fevered darkness with a thousand stars.
I seem to see him pale as he beholds
The wall of our advance. His ardent eye
Vacant of inspiration, can no more
Conceive; from that lax hand the thunderbolt
Drops: he hath called, but none obeys his voice:
Night, stride upon stride, blots out his worlds!
See, he is gone, who would control us all,
God and his works; and feverish man is past;
And all is once again as once it was,
Ere he disturbed us with his fiery brain;
Timeless and tideless, limitless and dark!”
But I exclaimed: “Pity me; cease, O cease!
This God, whom I saw perish, fashioned us,
He is our God, the only God we know;
Let him reign on!” Whereat the Spirit, plagued
By my small voice, and fretted from the dream
Which had absorbed him, turned, and in deep thought
With vast, unconscious eyes most fixedly
Beheld me, yet he saw me not the while:
And I in that abstracted, deep regard
Trembled, until at length he felt for me,
And found me at his side, and muttered soft:
“I had forgot thee, thou poor human thing:
I had a dream which I have often dreamed,
And thou wast gone from me a moment.” Now
He, on the stormy edge of the abyss,
Rejoiced. But troubled, I looked back: far off,
As sinks the twinkling shore to those at sea,
The solemn coast of trembling light departs.
Then, on a sudden, in a stormy gap
Plunged, I am swept away as by a sea.
Rushing upon me, unharnessed elements,
Fire, not as in the constellations kept,
Or prisoned in a planetary sun,
But in careering continents of flame,
And winds, not held in leash, or trained to blow
Or breathe upon our globe, but all at large!
Yet most in spirit am I now attacked.
Vague Fears assail me now, Dread undefined,
And roaming Apprehensions; voices sweet
Wooing me into unimagined sins;
Now fiendish Impulses seize on my soul,
And wild Suggestions of ungoverned minds
Are hurrying me away, were I not now
Met by some solitary Doubt, and stayed
As by a cloud; or wintering in some
Drifted Despair, which holds my soul a space,
It may be moments, or it may be years.
At last on my tormented eyes uprose
A realm, where all things seemed to droop and die:
So still it seemed, my heart did almost break.
Is this, I said, at last the peace of heaven?
Yet why, O spirit, art thou so faint within me?
And why, O soul, hast thou such fear of peace?
Through the dead air alone we rashly lived,
And rashly moved. Now hollow shells we passed
Which once were suns, and suns not yet quite dead,
Whose fires were burning low. As some strong beast
Who bears at his great heart a mortal wound,
And now the evening comes about him, he
With pain, rises, and drags his vast limbs out
Into a solitary place to die
Alone; even so it seemed, these stricken things
Come here to die; some pale and like to moons
Seen from our globe; nor these alone, but stars
Outworn, and systems spent, run down and wrecked,
Which, drifting here, were cast up on these shores,
To rust, and rusting waste, and wear away
Under a careless and permitted rain.
And from them, rotting, there arose a smell
As of unnumbered, rich, decaying leaves,
In autumn heaped. Still we continued on;
Around us myriads upon myriads
Of ruined worlds: or some expiring star
Would for a moment blaze up as we passed,
Illumining those wide and dismal coasts,
Then darken hissing in the rain. “Behold!”
Exclaimed the Spirit, “we are come at length
Into the region of the worlds that failed!”

IX.

At last we paused beneath the rain, and I
Whispered up to the Angel: “O, what means
This region of spent systems and dead suns?”
“Time was,” he answered, “when these foundered things
Were bright as any sapphire of the sky,
Peopled with creatures who adored the God
Ye now adore. But, wearying of them, he
Abandoned them; until at last their sun,
Even as a dying lion lets go his prey,
Fainting relaxed his loose caress of fire
And let them slip. Then they began to drift
Till they came hither, where one day your world
Will come: even now, God is deserting it.
Think but a moment; in old times indeed,
When the first bloom and down was on your star,
And when your world was young and in the heavens
Hung like a morning dew-drop, glistening,
Ye had wild glimpses of a God. The Jew
Conceived him then, a man, the creature too
Of whims, a thing of passions and of moods.
Then too the Greek beheld him, or so dreamed,
At ease upon Olympus, in clear air
Above the thunder, or gazing on the face
Of utter Truth and utter Purity.
Then ye beheld a God who left his heavens
For earth, your earth, now indistinguishable,
Somewhere, far off, the faintest of faint lights,
And lived amongst you, man among mankind;
And he, it seems, the master of the stars,
Gasped out his life, nailed up between two thieves
On Golgotha! Such flashes, wild perchance,
Yet flashes of his glory once ye had.
But now, what now? What of this latest age,
This dim and shaken time in which your lot
Is cast? Now Christ is failing; and what now?
In the dark rainy cities of your earth,
By smoke as by a blanket vast shut off,
Banished from heaven, and blind to heaven's sweet orb,
Ye have made unto yourselves new sun, new moon,
Of glare and gas; by an unnatural light
Ye live; and hearing but the throbbing mills,
The sullen beating of the heart of toil,
Or drudging at the desk, immortal man
Drearily keeps from yet more dreary death!
Ye hear no voice upon the air, ye hear
The thundering hammer and the whizzing wheel,
The gasp of steam. And now, feeling at last
God's absence in the air, from very cold
And loneliness together crowding close
On the doomed orb, man to his brother man
Turns, crying in despair: Thee at the least
I know, I see, I feel; be thou my God!
Of old at least, though as a man to men,
God spake to you, and saw you face to face.
Then in his wrath was grief intolerable,
And ecstacy in sweet repentant tears;
He stood above your battles, and he gave
The victory where victory was due.
Then death set free the imprisoned soul, to stray
In happy fields, or plunged it terribly
In purgatorial fires; ye did believe
At least: a terrible and righteous God
Sat in the heavens; he judged, he loathed, he loved.
But now ye see no more his face, nor hear
His voice upraised in anger or in love.
Why comes there not a God into the West
As once into the East? No more his feet
Shall be upon your fields; your planet comes
To a mechanic end, a wrecked machine,
To lie here like these worlds which waste around:
Once they could please God's eye, but now no more,
Abandoned as he is abandoning you!
Hence the long silence fallen on the world
In these sad days: and hence the cry for light.
Earth he hath left you to explore, to search,
To mine, to ransack: until, masters grown
Of the material world, after the long
Advance of science, now about at last
To burst beyond the limits of that earth
As conquerors, ye are suddenly brought up
By an appalling silence and a blank!
A myriad, myriad worlds he hath left behind
To spin for ever desperately alone:
Worlds that have failed as thine is failing now!
That vast cold spirit of the Beautiful
Which men call God, in his advance and march,
Sweeps onward, flashing out more glorious stars,
Lighting more splendid suns, crowding new spheres
With mightier beings; but, ever and anon,
If, for a moment, he may rest from toil,
There comes into his ear the far-off cry
Of ruined worlds that he hath left behind.
Then he arises, shaking from his ears
That jarring sound, and spreads once more his wings,
Conceiving, and creating, and accursed!”
But I, as in a frenzy, cried aloud:
“O that I might take wings made of the woes
Of men, and springing up, at length might break
God's long celestial silence with a cry,
Shivering his peace! That he at least might know
That we are living, praying, loving, dying,
Aud that a human face might evermore,
Haggard with passion, haunt him in his heavens!”
“Nay,” said the Spirit, “Why these frenzied cries?
Ye yet are happy; those whom thou didst leave
Behind live out their lives on earth content;
They know not what thou knowest, and have peace.
As some dumb creature in a laboratory,
Quivering beneath the vivisector's knife,
Still licks the keen cold hand that tears him, still
With large and trusting eyes looks up, so ye,
Though he tear flesh from flesh, still with the same
Meek wistful look gaze up into his face.”
“Is this the end? Is this the end?” I cried:
“Have we then striven for this, taken such care
For right and wrong, and lived the life denied,
And melancholy, stern, ascetic days?
And has the martyr died, but for a dream,
Wrapping the flames about him, like a robe,
Forgetting his charred limbs, the while he saw
With lifted, frenzied, and ecstatic eyes
The opening heavens, and on his raptured sight
The God for whom he died, began to loom?
Is this the shore, the goal of fiery faith?
A system come, like these I see around,
To a mechanic end, a wrecked machine?
The lover, too, who made so light of death,
Fired with a love he swore should never die!
Has he then perished for a dream, shall he
Slumber for ever on, or if he wake
With half-asleep, unrealizing eyes,
Awake but to the rush of elements?
Is all this vain? All we have striven for?” “Vain!”
Answered the Spirit. “When God had made your earth,
And, stooping from his intellectual calm,
With cold, aesthetic gaze surveyed it o'er,
His roaming eye, ever unsatisfied,
Lacked something yet. His world was very good,
But wanted movement, to delight his eye.
Then he created man, to live and move
Before him, to the dead background of earth
A living foreground, full of motions sweet.
Nor rested here; to give his picture warmth
And colour, Passion, and Desire, he gave,
That it might never pall upon his sight,
But when he glanced, be never still the same.
He gave you love and passion, as he gave
The springing field; hate, as the sterile rock;
And aspirations after higher things,
So that ye might not ever walk with eyes
Fastened on earth, but sigh unto the stars.
All is effect, contrast, variety,
Shadow and light, the just and the unjust;
And all these blotted out as with a sponge
When he paints out the picture that has failed!
Why dost thou now draw back, and canst not bear
To look on Truth, pining again, it seems,
For visions softer to the heart, for thought
Tempered as is the blast, tempered for earth?
Why did I hear thy prayer? Why did I light
At thy beseeching at thy side, with thee
Speaking, as with a Spirit, lifting thee
Out of that place of dreams to look on Truth?
Because that like a God, upon thy globe
I found thee sane, above or love or hate:
Could I have carried thee on such a flight,
If I had found thee loving or beloved?
No creature called to thee to stay; no face
Beckoned thee back; but thou wast free to plunge
With me into these deeps. Why dost thou now
Shrink back and sob, and durst not lift thine eyes?
Hast thou endured so much, and canst thou now
Endure no more? Hadst thou the strength to steal
Through the great fires of space, and out beyond
Into the waste where God had not yet built;
To live across that lawless flood, and come
Even unto this region of dim rain,
In thy exceeding great desire for Truth?
But now what ails thee? Here thy journey ends.
Rejoice to look at last upon a God
Serene, above all fever of the soul,
A God after thy heart; rejoice! so near
Hast thou approached Divinity, this God,
This intellect with cold, majestic eyes,
Conceiving and creating. Thou hast lived
But to see Truth, and, seeing, dost thou die?”
Then in great agony I cried out aloud:
“O heaven and earth! How am I melted now!
My heart I thought was dead, I feel again
Bursting within me! I dissolve and faint
Beneath this God, this pitiless Intellect,
Creating and again abandoning
To rain the ruined planets he creates!
How can I choose but weep remembering
Those human things, who in that far-away
Deserted star, are living holy lives;
Loving and praying, and enduring pain,
Dreaming that God, their father, at the last
Shall wipe away all tears? What should they do,
Poor quivering things with hearts, and hopes, and fears,
In such a scheme? Have I endured across
The rushing heavens, and dangers not alone
To body but to soul, to come at last
To this? a waste, and an appalling blank!
My eyes at last are human; they were made
For tears, and not to gaze on Truth, if this
Be Truth! O hear me, God! O stay thy flight
A moment, ere thou stretchest forth thy hand
To light another star. O speak to me!
To me, thy creature, wandered far beyond
The limits thou didst set! Thou didst at least
Fire me with inextinguishable thirst
For Truth; hast thou then urged me on to this,
And driven me to this waste? O, look on me!
I stand amid thy wrecks, and on my head
Feel thy relentless rain, and I lose hope
Amid discarded stars, and systems spent;
I dare not live amid dead planets! Speak!
I have such need of love, such piteous need;
O speak to me, and let me hear from thee
A word, a living whisper, that shall save
My soul from this great waste, or I shall die,
Where never living mortal yet hath died,
At the feet of this great angel. Speak, O speak!”
I ceased, and there is silence everywhere;
Silence upon the worlds abandonèd,
Silence upon the Spirit at my side;
And in that silence I despaired, and fell!

X.

When I revived and lifted up my eyes
I was on earth again, and lay like one
Who, half awake, cares not to wholly wake,
But lies content, and for a while puts off
Reality: and if the thought came back
Of all that I had seen and heard, it came
Dimly: while to myself in sweet relief
I murmured, Ah, thank God, it was a dream!
I lay back in the fields, and stretched myself
Amid the grasses; and I found repose
To my space-wearied eyes in watching there
The innumerable, tiny, creeping things
That people the green roots and blades of grass;
Dim citadels and cities thronged with life;
And common flowers and all the wayside blooms,
Which I had scorned, or passed unheeded by;
The daisy with her crown of bubbling gold,
The corn, with poppy and convolvulus,
I wept to see again. And Earth, my mother,
As though to welcome back her wandering son,
More sweet to her than sons who wandered not,
Seemed to me to spread out her lavish lap,
And for my sake to bring her treasures forth,
And in a thousand sweet and silent ways
Showed her delight; I all the while reclined
At ease upon the sweet abundant grass.
As you perchance, when one you loved has died;
Have you not waked upon the after-morn
As upon other morns, and so for one
Brief moment lain at peace, and have forgot
To be unhappy for a short sweet space:
Then suddenly remembered? Even so, I
Remembered on a sudden all that voyage,
The regions whence I came, and knew that joy
Was a forbidden thing for evermore!
I started to my feet, and sighed: Alas!
This is the last dream I shall ever dream;
I may not dream, nor hope. O ye sweet winds
Who flatter me with peace! ye come not now
Ambassadors inspired from some great Power,
But, with a wandering and uncertain voice,
At random speak. And thou, O rising sun,
Thou comest not, as once, fresh from God's hand,
And red and glowing from his glorious touch!
O dead unhappy earth, how art thou changed!
What is it that I miss? What hast thou lost?
There is no secret in the winds, no spell
Is in the air; the magic and the bliss
Is gone; thou still art fair, but O how cold!
For like some maid in lonely, dreamy youth,
Married to one who is not what he seemed,
Each day, each hour, each moment brings to her
Some little loss, some little ebb of faith,
Some petty disenchantment; till at last
She wakes, to see him as he is, and moans:
Can I live out my disenchanted life?
So I, at last, had shivered, and awaked
Amid the spell-less air, and cried aloud:
Can I live on, for evermore to walk
Upon a disillusioned earth, and watch
Each hour, a little glory leave the fields?
I fled away from nature, grown to me
Voiceless and cold, until I now had come
Into some city; and, passing on, I stood
In the thronged market place. I paused amazed
At all the littleness of life; for here
Men haggled, chattered, wrangled, trifled, laughed,
Nor realized a moment where they were;
Babbling, besieged by noiseless hosts and Powers.
Whence I had come, spirits indeed I saw
Silent, intense for evil or for good;
Defiance there, but here indifference.
And still I stood amid the crowd appalled,
And muttered to myself: What does this world
Here in mid-space? Is it as a relief
Amid God's sterner works, thrown off perchance
In some light interval, not starting straight
From the white glow and frenzy of his brain?
And to what end this little life of ours,
This trifling life? Scarce serious, so it seems,
Not to be taken in too grave a sense!
What doth it here, this sudden glimpse of farce,
Amid the gloom of solemn tragedy,
This trivial trembling on the terrible?
Once more I left the city, and went out
To cool me in the field, and there abode
Till evening found me; evening, sad and clear,
Pierced with a large star; and now, one by one,
They came, those bright stars, and looked down on me.
It seemed as though an angel passed through heaven
And with a rushing torch was kindling all
Her golden lamps; but soon that vision fled.
I knew them now. I watched till I could watch
No more, and turned away my eyes; but still
I felt them, millions upon millions,
Still crowding in on me! With head bent down,
Restless I wandered on, until the sound
Of many bells came to me, and I said:
Better to seek again my fellow men,
To drown in sound and light and crowds this sense
Of heavy silence, and of loneliness.
I will go hence, and in the whirl of the world
And in the hum of never-ceasing tongues
Live furiously, or drink my life away,
Till on my reeling brain, if memory
Break in, I shall but laugh as at a dream!
I fled away over the darkening fields,
And still those bells, like happy voices, drew
My steps, until at length a city vast
Rose up before me. Through the lighted streets
I laughed and wept, and cast from me at length
The weight and the long strain of solitude,
Drinking the light and sound, the rush of men;
Till carried onward by a multitude,
That hurried all one way, I stood at last
In a dim ancient church; and, as I stood,
The multitude as with a rustling hush,
Fell on their knees; and with one voice arose
The cry, Our Father! Then, at that low cry,
I woke from my wild trance, and realized
Whence I had come, and where I was, and knew
They still were praying to a God, whom I
Had seen abandoning upon his path
His ruined worlds. Then said I to myself,
Lo, I will tell them! But they seemed to me
So happy: here strong men, fresh from the world,
Found peace; and weak men spent with many a wave
Found strength; and here about me children sang;
And women, out of grim unlovely lives,
Tired women, who in that cool place forgot
Their feverish hours, here wept and found relief.
Thrice I essayed to speak, but all my voice
Went out in sobs; but soon the irony,
The piteous irony of it all, so worked
Upon me, that I started up and cried:
“O fellow-men and women, hear me! I
Bring to you such a message, that even now
I tremble at it: better to let you still
Live on, believing, hoping, praying still,
A life that ye can live; but yet, the thought
Of all this multitude fallen on its knees,
Wrought on me so that I must speak. O hear!
Lo, I have left this world behind, and saw
This earth, with all her continents and seas,
Fade to a point of light: still I endured,
And soaring did abide the starry heaven,
In glory rushing, silent as a dream.
This I have dared in my exceeding thirst
For Truth; and at the last I came to see
Her face, whom none hath seen; yet how should I
Tell what I saw with human eyes? O how
Begin, and if begin, how ever end?
The God, whom ye call Father; he who made
Us and our world, and many myriads more,
Conceived it in his intellectual soul,
And drew it as a picture beautiful,
On space as on a canvas, large and free.
Green fields he gave us, and the radiant sky,
And filled the earth with glory, and us too
He made, a living foreground to give change
And movement for his eye: nor stayed he there;
Passion he gave, and aspirations wild,
Fire of the soul to give his picture warmth
But he, cold artist of the heavens, at length
Grew weary, and his picture 'gan to pall
Upon his eye, and at this very hour
He is discarding it! Can ye not hear
Even now the rushing of his wings, as he
Is hurrying from us, on more splendid toils
Intent; conceiving other, fairer stars,
And peopling them with mightier beings? Us
He hath left for evermore! Still spins the earth,
Beautiful as of old; but never now
Rises the sun red from his glowing hand.
Hence comes the silence fallen upon the world
In these sad days; hence the incessant cry
For some new God, some streak of that fresh light,
Which in the world's first youth was wont to play
In flashes on the Hebrew and the Greek.
Then fear no more the final great assize,
The moon of blood, the throne, the scroll unrolled,
The looming judge, the sentence and the doom,
Nor that blast blown in the dead world's ear.
Still spins the orb, but with a dying whirl
And slower revolution labouring,
Till, with a last roll, spent she stands, run down:
And man there, master of the earth at last,
But godless, stretched amid his vast machines.
Slowly the cold sun shall relax his hold,
And Earth begin to drift, until she come
Unto a shore where myriads more have come,
To rust in ceaseless and remorseless rain.
Lo, I have stood amid God's foundered stars,
And felt his pitiless rain: but he still moves
Onward, to newer orbs and fresher stars
Than ours, which fails; and on this failing star
We now are breathing desperately alone!
Then kneel no more, for sin he heedeth not,
Nor sin's forgiveness; nothing ye can do
Can urge his anger, or arouse his love:
Once we could please his eye, but now no more!
Let these hysteric cries for love, for peace
Go, and find peace, if ye can find it now,
In that ye know truth; look on her, and despair,
As I despaired; as I am dying, die!”
I swooned, and knew no more, till I beheld
Your faces bending over me, and you
I prayed to carry me to these cold peaks
Where ye have laid me; for it seemed that I
Might cool my fever on the eternal snows.

XI.